“…[the Winona County Courthouse] is typical of an era when bad art and ugly buildings abounded”

The Winona Daily News editorial from 1964 did not mince words. And yet, the imposing 1888 Richardsonian Romanesque courthouse remains standing to this day, a prime example of a style of architecture that rapidly growing Midwestern towns clearly felt represented their grand and promising futures. When I visited a few years ago it still looked like the “the Lady,” a moniker coined during the preservation efforts of the 1960s and 70s. The building’s turrets and wide arches and carved stone decorations give it the feel of a Victorian-era castle. And, its location dominates the downtown Winona landscape as travelers into the city from Wisconsin cross the bridge spanning the Mississippi River.

The newspaper’s editorial board, not to mention staff writers and the courthouse reporter, spent many years promoting the demolition of the courthouse (and a nearby post office from the same era) and advocating for the construction of a modern building worthy of Winona’s “present day growth and progress,” as a president of the Winona National Bank had argued in 1957. It was a project favored by city government and business leaders but three times rebuffed by the voters of Winona County (most resoundingly by rural voters). Ignoring the wishes of the majority of voters, the county board decided to proceed without a bonding referendum: they would build the new courthouse in multiple stages using existing funds. Gradually the old building would be demolished as the new one arose on an adjacent site.

But the board now had to contend with new, younger voices - college and high school students led the charge - for whom the protests and community organizing of the late 1960s and early 1970s provided a blueprint for their historic preservation activism. A newly formed coalition drew media attention by arranging for picket lines at the courthouse, holding fundraisers with folk, rock, and jazz music and even recording a protest song entitled Save the Lady which was sung at a board meeting. Eventually, the paper acknowledged that popular opinion had swung towards restoration and preservation of the 19th century building and urged city leaders to back such efforts. The restored building, missing some of the interior woodworking details but preserving stained glass windows and original tiled fireplaces, was rededicated in 1974. The 1890 post office had been demolished many years before.

As you cruise down the river this summer, whether on a boat or a scenic highway, make a stop in Winona to see the proud Lady.

To read more about the efforts to “Save the Lady” see this issue of Minnesota History.

The Lady

The Winona County Courthouse stands today as a testament to one of the earliest and longest disputes over historic preservation in the state of Minnesota.

More images from the courthouse in Winona County

"for some reason ... witnesses usually lose their vocal powers when they take the witness chair..."

So laments a district court judge familiar with courtroom behavior in Detroit Lakes, Becker County, in northwestern Minnesota. As plans for a new courthouse were being prepared in early 1941, this judge offered his advice on seating arrangements that would allow the jurors to hear “all the evidence” especially when the lawyers and the witnesses “carry on a little conversation back and forth which is scarcely audible to the judge and wholly inaudible to the jurors who should hear it all.” He included a little pencil drawing of the courtroom to show how he thought the parties should all be seated.

Aside from this entertaining story of a judge’s attempt to shape the courtroom design (surely an acceptable form of influence), what I really love about this 1942 building is the massive black granite eagle guarding the front entrance to the building. Designed in the stylized (and, in this case, quite militaristic) vernacular of the Art Deco era, the figure displays an impressive strength but “whether as a reminder of the federal presence or as a symbol of authority is speculation,” according to documents from the Becker County Museum.

Foss & Co., a design and architecture firm that had won the contract to build the courthouse, has a rendering of the eagle but no information about its sculptor. The 2.5-ton life-size figure may have been designed by the lead architect at the time, Magnus O. Foss, Sr. although, intriguingly, a nearly exact model carved from a block of light-colored Vermont marble, had been created a decade earlier and installed on a courthouse in Albany, NY. Could the same artist have designed and carved both eagles? Had Mr. Foss seen the building in Albany? Even more curiously, the sculptor of the New York eagle, Albert T. Stewart, had worked with Minnesota native Paul Manship who is famously known as the sculptor of the Prometheus statue that overlooks skaters at Rockefeller Center. And there’s more, Mr Stewart created the reliefs on the bronze elevator doors that adorn the 1932 Ramsey County Courthouse in St. Paul. What kind of a rabbit hole have I fallen into?

At any rate, without FDR’s Works Progress Administration funds, to the tune of a $100,000 grant, the county may not have been able to afford the new courthouse. Luckily, a local election to approve an additional $150,000 that was needed to complete the project was approved in 1941.

Many thanks to Adam Peterson, a principal at Foss Architecture and Interiors who generously sent me what his firm has in their archives and my friend, Kate Nearpass Ogden who, as an art historian, has a network of art and architecture geeks who indulged my amateur detective work on this small town (read: flyover) civic gem.

Building in wartime

The 1942 Becker County Courthouse replaced a 1884 building that sagged, bulged, leaked, and was dangerously unstable.

More photographs of the Becker County Courthouse

"... [the] residents of Herman rigged an election and made off with the court records..."

These comments come from a Herman, Minnesota resident in 2011 when she nominated the Grant County Courthouse in Elbow Lake for recognition in MPR’s Celebrating Minnesota Architecture Series. I guess the woman’s temporal distance from the fraudulent event of the late 19th century allowed her to appreciate the beauty of the courthouse in spite of her residency in the wayward town.

The election for county seat, held in 1881, was acrimonious and civic leaders from Herman did indeed raid the county offices in Elbow Lake and cart off county records and iron safes. The election was eventually declared null and void when investigators discovered a sizable number of votes had not been counted in several townships and, in one, more votes were cast than there were eligible voters. It seemed temporary workers brought in from Anoka county had cast ballots before returning home and several minors as well as non-citizens (most immigrants at the time were from either Scandinavia or Germany) had also voted in one jurisdiction. Elbow Lake, barely a crossroads of buildings but conveniently located in the center of the county, received the nod to establish itself as the locus of county government.

Today the Grant county courthouse stands as one of the most beautiful interiors of the 89 county courthouses in Minnesota that I visited. Not that I can claim to have seen all of them. When I started this photography project it was the first year of the pandemic and I only took photos of the exterior of the buildings. But once I was able to get into more places, this courthouse in Grant County, built in 1905, immediately stood out. It’s not a large courthouse (the entire county numbered only about 9,000 residents at the 1900 census) but the people of the county wanted something outstanding to represent them and their, mostly, law-abiding population. The jewel in the crown is the rotunda dome with murals depicting agricultural scenes from this rural northwestern corner of the state.

Odin Oyen, a Norwegian immigrant who established a design firm in LaCrosse, Wisconsin after graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, decorated the building with those stunning murals and other details that have been restored recently in keeping with the design esthetic of the time.

[Note from the photographer: Although I anticipated publishing this account earlier in the year, the current political turmoil targeting immigrants in our Minnesota communities has made it difficult to concentrate. Readers may be ready for a minor distraction at this point and a story that involves proven voter fraud hits home in a way that seems quaint, if a little raw, some 145 years later.]

 
Murals on the dome of the Grant County (Minnesota) courthouse

The courthouse dome

Odin Oyen was paid $3000 to paint the murals and provide the courthouse’s interior decoration.

More images from the courthouse in Grant county

"... in view of the present depression that is sweeping the country..."

One of my favorite county courthouses of the eighty-nine I have visited and photographed is located in the southern Minnesota county seat of Faribault. One reason is the Art Deco architecture, that sleek, Moderne design we see so often in the slapstick comedies of the 1930s, in the Manhattan apartments with their tenants dressed in slinky dresses and crisp dinner jackets smoking cigarettes from pencil-thin holders. This is the bureaucratic version, a rebellion against the towers and gingerbread and oversized stonework and Greek columns of previous architectural eras.

And this particular courthouse, commissioned in 1931 following a fire that destroyed the original courthouse, speaks to the constraints and concerns of the time. The United States was in the middle of the Great Depression when between a quarter and a third of Minnesota’s workforce was unemployed. The Minnesota Historical Society has a letter from the Chairman of the Central Labor Committee to the Board of County Commissioners of Rice County describing a resolution passed by representatives of the carpenters’, painters’, plumbers’, and barbers’ (why barbers?) unions. The resolution requested, respectfully, that all laborers work not more than 8 hours a day for a minimum of $.45 per hour and that all labor and materials for the reconstruction of the courthouse come from Rice County, as fas as was possible. You could say a “Rice County First” policy to get the economy back on track.

Art Deco Beauty

The cornerstone of the Rice County Courthouse was laid on December 21, 1932 following a fire that destroyed the original 1874 building. Note the sundial over the central bank of windows - the only courthouse in the state to mark time by the sun.