Swain County Courthouse - Bryson City, NC
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debbado
N 35° 25.665 W 083° 26.697
17S E 278039 N 3923226
The old Swain County Courthouse was built in 1908 for an approximate cost of $35,000. It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Waymark Code: WM6PBK
Location: North Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 06/30/2009
Views: 8
The county’s first court was held in a log house, five miles west of Bryson City, previously known as Chatham. The first courthouse was constructed in 1872. The main floor of the building was used both for county offices and for court. The jail was located on the lower level and could be reached only by lowering a ladder through a door in the floor above. This building soon burned, and a second one was constructed in 1880.
In 1908, the Swain County Commissioners ordered the construction of a new courthouse, and they appointed Frank P. Milburn of Washington, D.C. and R. S. Smith as architects. Milburn was a well-known architect who designed many public buildings in North Carolina and throughout the South. Smith worked in Asheville, first with Richard Morris Hunt at Biltmore Village, and then independently. Falls City Construction Company, of Louisville, Kentucky, built the structure which cost approximately $35,000. The commissioners authorized the company to get “a tower clock with metal Bell for a cost of $850.00” in the new courthouse.
Architectural Description
The courthouse built in 1908 was the most ambitious structure in Bryson City. The building is a large, early Neo-Classical Revival style building set on a spacious corner lot and joined to the county jail and sheriff’s office by an enclosed second story crosswalk.
The two-story stuccoed courthouse is a three-part composition. The central block has clipped corners and a hipped roof and is fronted by a pedimented four-columned Ionic portico. Two-story flat roof wings project laterally beyond the core. The south façade has a pedimented entrance pavilion divided into three bays by Ionic pilasters. A heavy three-part cornice wraps around the building which is crowned with an octagonal Neo-Classical cupola containing clock faces on four sides.
The interior of the old courthouse is a transverse hall plan with offices on the first floor and a courtroom and offices on the second. Most of the finishing details are intact and include a pressed tin ceiling with a classical egg and dart crown mold pattern and plain board door surrounds in the courtroom.
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