Northern Utah Courthouses

Traveling north out of Salt Lake City, the first courthouse is Davis County in Farmington.


An old but very well preserved courthouse, it still operates for the state court system.

The History of the Davis County Courthouse First Davis County Courthouse (Knowlton, Brief Histroy of Farmington) On March 3, 1852, the Territorial Legislature created Davis County and named Farmington the county seat. The first County Court (now the Board of Commissioners) met on March 22, 1852. The Court instructed the County Clerk in June, 1853, "to make out three draughts (blueprints) of a County Court House to be presented at the next general election." Utah's first courthouse, the two-story adobe building (photo) was built on a rocky knoll on the south side of State Street in Farmington. It contained three jury rooms, three offices, a hall and a courtroom. In 1861, an east room was secured for a jail. A new privy was built in 1862. In 1867, handcuffs and a ball and chain were purchased, and an iron jail cage was installed in the northeast corner room. After a new courthouse was constructed, Mrs. Aurelia S. Rogers was granted use of the upper room for holding a children's Primary Fair in September, 1890. The old facility was then demolished and Farmington's Main Street extended south where the building had stood. Second Davis County Courthouse (Utah State Historical Society) The Davis County Court (Commission) approved the construction of a new courthouse in a special session on May 20, 1889. Plans by Kaysville architect, William Allen, were approved in July, and the building contract was awarded to E. B. Tyson for $11,100 in the August court session. A protest petition from John G. M. Barnes and 150 others was tabled "as being too late to do anything about it." "After making acid tests on brick, it was ordered that the contractor for the new Court House use Mr. Samuel Ward's brick in the erection of the same." Mr. Ward's brickyard was located on the Mountain Road east of Kaysville. C. W. Richardson, bondsman, took over construction of the new courthouse in June, 1890 when the contractor failed to complete his contract. The new building was completed on August 18, 1890. Third Davis County Courthouse (Utah State Historical Society) Davis County Commissioners announced plans in 1929 to enlarge the county courthouse. An initial Renaissance design with a turret corner entrance was replaced by a more traditional plan featuring a classical Grecian portico supported by six Ionian columns. The renovation utilized all the rooms of the original 1890 facility, removing its tall tower and adding east and west wings. A lawsuit filed by some disgruntled citizens failed to stop construction, and the $60,425 project was completed in 1932. A 1957-58 addition doubled the courthouse and another large addition to the southern side was completed in 1979. A 1997 renovation removed the ceiling installed in the front entry hall during the 1932 construction, revealing the original 1890 ornate ceiling, now lighted with antique electrical fixtures.

As with many courthouses throughout the country, it has a monument to veterans. In Davis County, it is a beautiful stained glass window with the names of the Veterans.


Next up the road is the Weber County Courthouse in Ogden. This is it. Seriously! OK, this is not the only horse in town, but what is the deal?


A bit further north in Brigham City is the Box Elder County Courthouse. This is a very historic building, and still houses the county offices.



Sitting at the head of Forester Street, the courthouse looks out to the west and can be seen for miles approaching from the west.


The beautifully preserved clock tower dome is one of the most striking features of this building.

Box Elder County Courthouse Main & Forest streets

The County Courthouse was begun in 1855 or 1856, the first public building in Brigham City. As soon as the basement walls were built and windows and doors installed, a temporary roof was added so it could be used for meetings and theatrical productions.

By 1857, two stories of adobe brick were built, but before the walls were finished, a strong wind blew some of them down. These walls were then rebuilt, and the building was completed before the end of 1857. Lorenzo Snow asked builder James Pett to install a roof that would stay. He accomplished this without nails, using wooden pegs and horse hide.

As the only public building, it was used for drama, religious services, recreation, and school as well as for city and county meetings and business.

Simeon D. Carter Jr. attended school there and told his family about it. His daughter wrote: "Father often told us of the furnishing of the school room in the court house where he went to school and Sunday School. It consisted of long slab seats without backs, and the legs made of rough boards stuck through the holes bored in the slab. One long slab was hinged to the wall for the desk, where the boys and girls went to practice penmanship. They laboriously followed a copy, set by the teacher, at the top of long sheets of 'foolscap' paper. Chidlren from the ABC class to the grown girls and boys were all in the same classroom."

In the early 1870s a large bell in the Courthouse tower signaled work time, lunch time, and quitting time for the Brigham Cooperative enterprises. It was also a fire bell.

In 1883 Peter F. Madsen, Probate Judge of Box Elder County, had the Courthouse renovated and had trees and shrubs planted.

A major remodeling in 1910 completely changed the courthouse's appearance. A large section extended the front of the building, and stone columns and a new tower were added. The original building became the rear wing.

District Court and judicial chambers were housed in the courthouse until the summer of 1994 when they moved to a new building. All county government departments remain in the courthouse at present.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

The new First District Court building is located across Main Street slightly north of the old one.



Moving further north up into Cache Valley, the courthouse in Logan is also very striking.




The courthouse was constructed in 1882-83, replacing a frame county building on the same site. Plans were drawn by architect Truman O. Angell, Jr.,(the original architect of the Salt Lake Tabernacle who's plans didn't work and ended up being replaced by my Great Great Grandfather Henry Grow), and the contract was let to the United Order Manufacturing and Building Company of the LDS Church's Logan Second Ward. Local materials were used for all but the finishing touches. An addition was built on the rear c. 1905, and two wings were added to the front in 1917, expanding the building to its present size.




A new courthouse has been built behind the old one on a side street to the west.

New Haven County, New Haven Connecticut

The New Haven County Courthouse, at the corner of Elm and Church Streets, was one of a handful of buildings commissioned by New Haven County to bolster its City Beautiful movement. Modeled after St. George's Hall in Liverpool, England, the courthouse was designed by New Haven architects William Allen and Richard Williams. The building's design infused Beaux-Arts principles in a Neo-classical style. Construction began in 1909 and five years later, at a cost of $1.3 million, the structure was completed. It officially opened its doors on March 24, 1914. Statuary in front of the Courthouse by noted sculptor J. Massey Rhind and murals and lunettes inside by famed early 20th Century painter T. Thomas Gilbert help give the imposing building its aesthetic appeal.



The statue is of the Roman orator Cicero. On this cold day in January, he had a bunch of snow in his lap!

New Haven in 1970 witnessed the largest trial in Connecticut history. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale and ten other Party members were tried for murdering an alleged informant. May Day, 1970 saw the beginning of the pretrial proceedings for the first of the two New Haven Black Panther trials; it was met with a demonstration by twelve thousand Black Panther supporters, including a large number of college students, who had come to New Haven individually and in organized groups and were housed and fed by community organizations and by Yale students in their dorms.

The demonstrations continued through the Spring. By day protesters assembled on the New Haven Green across the street from the Courthouse to hear speakers including Jean Genet, Benjamin Spock, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and John Froines; afterwards, many taunted the New Haven police, and in return were tear gassed and retreated to their temporary quarters. The police behind them half-heartedly assaulted the dormitories, as was customary for such demonstrations at the time, but on the whole it was peaceful, with very little injury or property damage and only two minor bombings. The National Guard were kept ready on the highways into the city, but police chief Jim Ahern determined that the city police were controlling the situation adequately, and that the presence of the Guard would only inflame the situation; the events at Kent State University a few days later were to prove him prescient.

This coincided with the beginning of the national student strike of May 1970. Local Yale University (and many other colleges) went "on strike" from just before May Day until the end of the term; as at many colleges it was not actually "shut down", but classes were made "voluntarily optional" for the time and students were graded pass/fail for work done up to then.

AMISTAD CASE

The Federal courthouse on the opposite end of the Green replaced the Federal District Court which was the scene of one of the more famous slave related cases in American history.

In 1807, the U.S. Congress joined with Great Britain in abolishing the African slave trade, although the trading of slaves within the United States was not prohibited. Despite the international ban on the importation of African slaves, Cuba continued to transport captive Africans to its sugar plantations until the 1860s, and Brazil to its coffee plantations until the 1850s.

On June 28, 1839, 53 slaves recently captured in Africa left Havana, Cuba, aboard the Amistad schooner for a sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, Cuba. Three days later, Sengbe Pieh, a Membe African known as Cinque, freed himself and the other slaves and planned a mutiny. Early in the morning of July 2, in the midst of a storm, the Africans rose up against their captors and, using sugar-cane knives found in the hold, killed the captain of the vessel and a crewmember. Two other crewmembers were either thrown overboard or escaped, and Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes, the two Cubans who had purchased the slaves, were captured. Cinque ordered the Cubans to sail the Amistad east back to Africa. During the day, Ruiz and Montes complied, but at night they would turn the vessel in a northerly direction, toward U.S. waters. After almost nearly two difficult months at sea, during which time more than a dozen Africans perished, what became known as the "black schooner" was first spotted by American vessels.

On August 26, the USS Washington, a U.S. Navy brig, seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island and escorted it to New London, Connecticut. Ruiz and Montes were freed, and the Africans were imprisoned pending an investigation of the Amistad revolt. The two Cubans demanded the return of their supposedly Cuban-born slaves, while the Spanish government called for the Africans' extradition to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder. In opposition to both groups, American abolitionists advocated the return of the illegally bought slaves to Africa.

The story of the Amistad mutiny garnered widespread attention, and U.S. abolitionists succeeded in winning a trial in a U.S. court. Before a federal district court in New Haven, Cinque, who was taught English by his new American friends, testified on his own behalf. On January 13, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved, that they would not be returned to Cuba to stand trial for piracy and murder, and that they should be granted free passage back to Africa. The Spanish authorities and U.S. President Martin Van Buren appealed the decision, but another federal district court upheld Judson's findings. President Van Buren, in opposition to the abolitionist faction in Congress, appealed the decision again.

On February 22, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing the Amistad case. U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who had served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, joined the Africans' defense team. In Congress, Adams had been an eloquent opponent of slavery, and before the nation's highest court he presented a coherent argument for the release of Cinque and the 34 other survivors of the Amistad.

On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled, with only one dissent, that the Africans had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to fight for their freedom. In November, with the financial assistance of their abolitionist allies, the Amistad Africans departed America aboard the Gentleman on a voyage back to West Africa. Some of the Africans helped establish a Christian mission in Sierra Leone, but most, like Cinque, returned to their homelands in the African interior. One of the survivors, who was a child when taken aboard the Amistad as a slave, eventually returned to the United States. Originally named Margru, she studied at Ohio's integrated and coeducational Oberlin College in the late 1840s before returning to Sierra Leone as evangelical missionary Sara Margru Kinson.

"Amistad" is a magnificent movie based on the facts of the case. The film stars Matthew McConaughey as the young lawyer Baldwin, Morgan Freeman as Theodore Joadson, Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams and Djimon Hounsou as the slave's leader Cinque.