Courtroom from the Northwest Looking Southeast

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Virtual Tour: Licking County Courthouse

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This photo depicts the beautiful west courtroom, as it looks today. The west courtroom was always the crowning glory of the courthouse; when it was completed in 1878, it was the courtroom which drew the most attention. Of course, the 1879 fire and over a century of time have changed the appearance of the west courtroom significantly since it was first built. Effort has been made to restore the courtroom to an approximation of its original appearance. The walls continue to be adorned with the faces of famous distinguished men, as they were in 1878.

The original west courtroom

At the dedication ceremony of the new courthouse, one reporter for the Newark Advocate remarked on the beauty of the west courtroom in particular:

"The wood-work is all of dark wood, and heavy, and rich. The chandeliers are heavy and beautiful, being finished in bronze and jet. The furniture is of heavy carved wood and leather. But the most beautiful feature of the room is its frescoing. The colors are light, the prevailing tints being yellow, green, vermillion, and mauve. There is nothing course or glaring, and the delicate beauty and perfect harmony of the whole, cannot but appeal to the aesthetic taste of all lovers of art."

The 1879 fire destroyed much of the courtroom, doing particular damage to the frescoed ceiling and the stained glass windows, and the proceedings of the Common Pleas Court were temporarily moved to the basement. However, repairs restored the courtroom as closely as possible to its original.

Renovations to the west courtroom

In 1903, renovations on the courtroom's interior began, attempting to bring modern convenience to the courthouse in anticipation of the turn of the century. The renovations were led by architect Louis Lane of Toledo. The room received new woodwork and 50 electric lights for the dome, furnished by August Roehr of Columbus. Behind the Judge's bench, a painting of Justice was replaced with two paintings symbolically representing Peace and War. Other paintings were refurbished or replaced and new carpeting was laid. These renovations were completed in 1905.

Recent renovation efforts

Many decades passed, and the courtroom remained more or less unchanged. The entire courthouse was nearly torn down in the 1960s, when the city of Newark wanted to join East and West main streets and move the courthouse somewhere else altogether. When the courthouse was allowed to stay, other rooms received renovation efforts, particularly heating and electrical. The courthouse exterior was repaired and maintained in the mid-1990s, but there was not enough money to provide the west courtroom with the funding it had begun to desperately need. The murals on the ceiling faded nearly to the point of invisibility, and the other paintings had begun to flake and decay. Eventually, for the cost of materials, a fine arts professor at nearby Denison University was brought in with some of his students to attempt to restore the murals on the ceiling to their former beauty and clarity.

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Sources:

"County Courthouse needs a face-lift." The Newark Advocate, April 16, 1992.
"Court Rooms Remodeled." Newark American Tribune, December 12, 1905.
Kibler, Col. C. H. "Opening of the New Court Room, 1897."
"Paintings in Peril." The Newark Advocate, February 20, 2007.
"The New Court House: The Size and Structure of the Edifice: Its Acceptance and Dedication."
The Newark Advocate, October 19, 1878.
"The Search is On." The Newark Advocate, December 31, 1991.
"With work, Courthouse may look like a million." The Newark Advocate, September 26, 1995.

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