The Courthouse Square — Three Courthouses, One of Them Moved

1832 – present

The first courthouse (1833): In January 1832 the St. Joseph County commissioners voted to build a courthouse, and on 7 February they accepted Peter Johnson's proposal to build it for $6,000. It was a plain, square brick building, forty feet by forty feet, facing Main Street at the corner of Main and West Washington. It was finished enough by September 1833 for the commissioners to accept and use it, though finishing work continued through September 1837. The building's place in the national record — the 1849 habeas corpus hearing for the Powell family, freedom seekers seized in Michigan and brought before Judge Elisha Egbert in its courtroom — belongs to the Black history section of this history; here it is enough that the city's first public building was a forty-foot brick box, and that by the 1850s the county found it too confining.

The second courthouse (1853–55), the one that moved: In 1853 the county commissioned John M. Van Osdel of Chicago — the city's first professional architect's generation — to design a replacement, at a cost of $35,000. Completed in 1855 on the same corner, the new courthouse was a Greek Revival building of a different order from its predecessor: columns along the front, an entrance facing east, and a cupola carrying a bell. When, forty years on, the county decided to build again on the same ground, it made the decision that gives South Bend's courthouse square its distinction: rather than demolish the 1855 building, it kept it, and turned it around. Under Harvey Sheeler of Chicago, beginning 19 November 1895, workmen cut into the foundation, inserted logs, iron and steel beams, lifted the building onto rollers, and through the cold and snowy winter turned it 180 degrees and moved it to face Lafayette Street. On 27 February 1896, at 3:45 in the afternoon, its bell tower rang in its new position. The Old Courthouse, at 112 South Lafayette Boulevard, was listed on the National Register on 4 September 1970 — the county's earliest listing — and after its courthouse years it housed the local G.A.R. chapter and the county historical museum; today it holds the offices of the Traffic and Misdemeanor Court. It is, on the record, a courthouse that was rotated and rolled rather than razed, and it stands.

The third courthouse (1896–98): The new building's own course was a public fight. On 24 May 1895 the commissioners resolved on a new courthouse with a $300,000 cost cap and announced Amos William Rush and his son Edwin, of Grand Rapids, as architects; township meetings across the county protested the cost, and on 29 January 1896 the commissioners rejected the Rushes' plans and chose instead the Chicago office of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge — the firm of the Chicago Public Library and the World's Congress Auxiliary Building at the 1893 World's Fair. The supervising architect on the ground was George Selby, who afterwards began his own practice in South Bend. The Multiple Resource Area nomination records that construction began on 31 October 1896 and that James Stewart and Company built the courthouse for $184,246; the Indiana University South Bend courthouse history dates the official start of work to 11 November 1896 and puts the final cost at just under $240,000. Both figures stand in the record as they are printed here: the contract price and the finished cost are different mechanisms, and the two starts are eleven days apart in the two best accounts. On 4 November 1898 the lights in the new courthouse were lit and the public invited in; an estimated 10,000 people came. The building is a Neo-Classical composition in limestone, in the nomination's own classification, on the southwest corner of Main and Washington, and it has been in continual use by the county since it opened. It was listed on the National Register in the downtown batch of 5 June 1985.

The tower beside them: The county's fourth seat, the County-City Building of 1967–1971, belongs as an institution to the Government section; as a building it completes the square. Designed by the South Bend firm of Maurer, Van Ryn, Ogden & Natali — principal architect Oliver H. Ogden — it rose fourteen stories and 196 feet beside the 1898 courthouse on Jefferson Boulevard, in aluminum, glass, limestone and brick. The courthouse historian Ted Shideler counts it one of only three county courthouses in Indiana built in the International style. The courts sat in it while the 1898 building was renovated, returning in November 1971, and since 2015 part of the tower has served again as a courthouse — Courthouse 3, holding the criminal division of the Superior Court — so that the square today holds three working courthouses of 1855, 1898 and 1970 within a single block.

Sources:

1. Indiana University South Bend, African American Landmark Tour, "St. Joseph County Courthouses" (aalt.iusb.edu) — the 1832 vote and $6,000 contract, the 1833 acceptance, the 1853 commission and $35,000 cost, the 1855 completion, the Rush rejection of 29 January 1896, the move of the second courthouse and the bell of 27 February 1896, the 11 November 1896 start, the opening of 4 November 1898 and the final cost.
2. National Register nominations, Downtown South Bend Historic Multiple Resource Area — the Third St. Joseph County Courthouse sheet: the Neo-Classical limestone description, construction begun 31 October 1896, James Stewart and Company, $184,246, George Selby supervising, continual use since 1898.
3. National Register of Historic Places, Old Courthouse (Second St. Joseph County Courthouse), ref. 70000007, listed 4 September 1970 — the Van Osdel attribution, the Greek Revival classification in the Register's records, the 1896 move, and the G.A.R. and museum years.
4. Ted Shideler, "The St. Joseph County, Indiana Courthouse (1967–69; 2015–)" — the County-City Building's architects, height, International style standing and Courthouse 3 use.