The Page County Courthouse in

Clarinda, Iowa Clarinda is a city in and the county seat of Page County, Iowa. It is located in Nodaway Township. The population was 5,369 at the time of the 2020 census. History Clarinda was founded in 1851, and incorporated on December 8, 1866. Many stori ...

, United States, was built in 1887. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1981 as a part of the County Courthouses in Iowa Thematic Resource. The courthouse is the fourth building the county has used for court functions and county administration.

History

Initially, the official functions of Page County were carried out southeast of Clarinda. The city became the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...

in 1853. The county judge had a frame structure built on the north side of the public square for his offices and to sell goods. It was destroyed, along with county records, in a fire in 1858. Two years prior to that a two-story frame building was constructed as a courthouse, but the building proved inadequate and court was held in churches and school buildings. Efforts to replace it in 1870 and 1873 failed at the ballot box. The board of supervisors decided to take action on their own and in 1873 a simple building measuring was constructed on the town square in Clarinda for $7,456. Planning for the current courthouse was begun in 1882 and the foundations were laid in 1885 and the building, completed in 1887, cost $86,500 to construct. The state fire marshal ordered the removal of the clock tower in 1950 because of falling bricks. It was removed the following year and replaced with a wrought iron railing and flagpole. The courthouse was gutted in a fire on December 11, 1991. A bond issue was passed by voters in August 1992 for $875,000 and another $175,000 in private donations was raised to replace the clock tower. The restored courthouse was rededicated on June 5, 1994.

Architecture

The courthouse is a two-story structure that is composed of red brick with

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

trim. Surrounding the main entrance is a single-story stone portico. The building exhibits an eclectic mix of Gothic Revival and

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

design elements. with A wide cornice with a denticular

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

runs below the projecting bracketed

eave The eaves are the edges of the roof which overhang the face of a wall and, normally, project beyond the side of a building. The eaves form an overhang to throw water clear of the walls and may be highly decorated as part of an architectural styl ...

. The windows feature a variety of shapes, including rectilinear, triangular, segmental arched, and round-arched. The hoods of the round-arch windows give the illusion of being pointed. The courthouse is capped with a

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

. In the center of the structure is a high square

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, fro ...

with a clock, a steep roof, and wrought iron cresting. The significance of the courthouse is derived from its association with county government, and the political power and prestige of Clarinda as the county seat.

References

{{NRHP in Page County, Iowa Government buildings completed in 1887 Italianate architecture in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Page County, Iowa Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa County courthouses in Iowa Clock towers in Iowa