Defending “Government Houses”
I missed this yesterday. The Pal-Item ran a guest editorial advancing the position that Indiana’s grand old courthouses should be preserved, not leveled: Courthouses deserve honor, not demolition
Considering the years in which most of Indiana’s current courthouses were built — the 1870s through the 1890s — the sheer size and elegance tells you a great deal about the importance people gave to constructing the place where justice is dispensed. The expenditure of hundreds of thousands in 1880 reflected the serious level of commitment to what our 19th Century counterparts considered the most elevating of our civic activities.The tax dollars they raised-and sacrificed at the expense of other government services-to pay for our courthouses shows the value they placed on this symbol of community life. Their investment shames by comparison the cheap, unadorned and even tawdry government structures we frequently build today.
The author of the piece is none other that Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, Randal T. Shepard.
