Old Fayette County Courthouse (Kentucky)

The courthouse occupies one of the most prominent locations in the city of Lexington, close to the exact geographic center of the urban agglomeration, in the Downtown Commercial [Historic] District. It occupies the center of the block bounded by W. Main Street, Cheapside, W. Short Street, and N. Upper Street, and is the only enclosed structure on the block, set off from the surrounding buildings by considerable space as befitting a monumental civic structure. The site slopes downwards from north to south, exposing a basement story on the south (main façade) but hiding it below ground level on the north side. which is not only a popular building material in the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky, but has made the area famous by ideally enriching its soil with minerals that facilitate the raising of top-quality thoroughbred racehorses. A stone cornice rings the structure at the base of the roof, and on each side the roofline is topped by a central gable. On the south façade three gables top the roofline, with a triple set of round-arched windows laid in it. ==History==

The Old Courthouse sits on the site of its two immediate predecessors. Fayette County's first courthouse, which was not located there, was erected in 1782. The four previous courthouses were all destroyed—some purposely, some by tragic accident—and no vestiges of them survive. The previous courthouse, built in 1887 and designed by Thomas Boyd, used a neoclassical style with a central dome and also faced W. Main Street to the south. It was destroyed by fire on May 14, 1897, apparently while a group of fifth-grade students were taking a final exam, though the students all made it out of the building safely. Immediately the government of Fayette County undertook to build the present structure. Lehman and Schmitt chose a Richardsonian Romanesque style for the courthouse. The building is one of the very few (and by far the most impressive) of the courthouses in Kentucky that use this strand of Romanesque-revival architecture, so named for its introduction to the United States in the 1870s by Boston-based architect H.H. Richardson. The National Register nomination for the Lexington Downtown Commercial District quotes the architects at the dedication of the structure in February 1900 as declaring that "the style of architecture should be characteristic of the purpose for which the building design is used. It should be severe, and yet of proper characteristic to impress the eye by proper harmony of lines and beauty of proportion rather than by detail or showy ornament or eccentric treatment." and Vertner Tandy on grounds of Old Fayette County Courthouse, Lexington. Many companies were involved in the building's construction, and are listed on two marble plaques in the main entrance hall of the courthouse. A state historic marker next to the courthouse celebrates Tandy and his son, Vertner Woodson Tandy, who later became the first African-American architect in the state of New York. Alterations The courthouse became subject to pressure from an increase in court business during the 1950s, as only one courtroom was available for a caseload that normally required five. Moreover, the building had been originally constructed without air conditioning. In 1951, plans were floated by the County Commissioner and the Lexington Chamber of Commerce to demolish the building in the face of serious opposition to build a large new complex including businesses, county offices, courtrooms, the jail, a parking lot and a separate underground parking garage. These created, according to local journalists reporting in 1980, a series of "labyrinthine, low-ceilinged, and poorly-lit interior corridors." In addition, a fourth floor was inserted below the roof, and as a result the windows on the third floor of the south façade lost their arches to accommodate windows for this additional floor above. Nonetheless, the building was included in the survey of Lexington's Downtown Commercial [Historic] District when it was conducted in the early 1980s and filed with the National Park Service in August 1983. In 2012, the museums were forced to vacate the Old Courthouse when the Urban County Government discovered hazardous lead paint and mold as part of an environmental survey. The building then sat vacant as the city-county government debated what to do with the structure, finally deciding in 2016 to renovate it. In 2017–18, the building underwent a $33 million (~$ in ) rehabilitation, aided by both Federal and state Historic Tax Credits. The Old Courthouse reopened in late 2018 as a multi-purpose structure that integrates a municipal visitor center, cafés, civic offices, and special event spaces. The renovations uncovered the interior of the rotunda, although the grand staircase and original interiors of the courtroom were not restored. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in November 2018, during which Lexington mayor Jim Gray stated, "We knew the good bones were here, but the bones had to be rearranged into something modern, inviting and compelling. Whatever we did here needed to be a beacon for the future and not just a curio of the past." ==Confederate monuments==

The courthouse was built adjacent to Cheapside Park, the former site of slave auctions and trading during the nineteenth century; these had ceased by 1866 with the abolition of slavery. However, in 1887, a memorial statue of Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, the Confederate States Secretary of War, was erected on the lawn of the Courthouse that included Cheapside Park, in honor of a man who had served the traitorous seceding Confederate states that sought to perpetuate slavery in the United States. It was joined by an equestrian monument to Confederate general John Hunt Morgan in 1911. The statues were moved closer to Main Street in front of the Old Courthouse in 2010, as part of the renovation of Cheapside into a multipurpose entertainment pavilion. These statues had been erected as part of an effort to enforce white supremacy and perpetuate anti-black racism during the nadir of American race relations at the turn of the twentieth century. In November 2015, the Urban County Arts Review Board recommended the removal of both statues as part of the larger reconsideration of Confederate monuments in the United States. The monuments were removed on October 17, 2017, and eventually relocated to Lexington Cemetery west of downtown, where they were placed at the gravesites of Morgan and Breckinridge, respectively. ==External links==