Grant County Courthouse Square - Lancaster, WI
N 42° 50.868 W 090° 42.593
15T E 687127 N 4746457
Lancaster calls itself "The City of the Dome" after the octagonal glass and copper-clad dome of its courthouse building, which was designed by Armand Koch and built in 1905. It is located at 126 W. Main in Lancaster, WI.
Waymark Code: WM5N4C
Location: Wisconsin, United States
Date Posted: 01/24/2009
Views: 4
LANCASTER, 49.2 m. (1,086 alt., 2,432 pop.), since 1837 the seat of Grant County, is old, shady, placid. Its business buildings straggle around the courthouse square, its residences spread irregularly beyond.
In the center of the George W. Ryland Park is the Public Library, an old white building with the flat siding and ornate roof popular in the 1880's. In shady Courthouse Square is the red brick Courthouse with a gleaming dome of copper and green glass. Within the building a sealed box bears the inscription, "Accursed be he who openeth me ere a hundred years are gone." The box was sealed in 1876 during the country's celebration of the 100th anniversary of American Independence and contains issues of the county newspapers, agricultural products raised at the time, and the like. A Civil War Monument, one of the first erected in the United States, and a Statue of Nelson Dewey, the State's first Governor (1848-1852), stand in the square. Dewey (see below) is buried in the local Episcopalian cemetery.
---Wisconsin, A Guide to the Badger State, 1941
Today The courthouse square looks much as it did in 1941. The building dominates the city. The Civil War monument and Nelson Dewey status are on the courthouse lawn. A new war memorial was added to the lawn in 1986.