Lauderdale County Courthouse - Ripley, Tennessee - Courthouses on Waymarking.com

The Lauderdale County Courthouse, located on the public square in Ripley (pop. 6,188), Tennessee, is an excellent example of PWA Modern architecture. The structure was designed by the Nashville architecture firm Marr and Holman and built by R. M. Condra Contractors in 1936. Although it and several other courthouses were begun at the same time, the Lauderdale County Courthouse was the first Public Works Administration funded courthouse to be completed in Tennessee. The two story plus a basement courthouse was designed to be fireproof, being constructed of a reinforced concrete frame with concrete exterior walls. The basement level water table is faced with plain course limestone ashlar with a beveled top course. The upper two stories are faced with buff-colored glazed brick. These exterior walls are twelve inches thick. All fenestration is metal and has always been painted medium brown. The courthouse features a flat composition roof with a decorative limestone band around the top edge of the parapet.

The courthouse is situated on raised ground in the center of the square. The grading on the south and east sides of the courthouse lawn is not as steep as the north and west. Each entrance, is accessed by a set of concrete stairs from the street level, up to a walk which leads to another set of concrete stairs. These stairs lead up to the entrance landings. All four entrance walks are connected by a concrete walk that circumscribes the entire building. The primary entrance is located on the west facade.

The courthouse is based on a central block with symmetrical wings plan. The center block is fifty feet wide, fifty-five feet deep, and forty feet high. Each wing is twenty-five feet wide, fifty feet deep, and thirty-five feet high. The most prominent exterior characteristic of the courthouse is its vertical stepped massing. The north and south facades have five bays, visible on all three floors. The middle bay projects out the farthest, with the flanking bays projecting out from the two end bays. The east and west facades have eleven bays. The center block section contains five bays with the center bay extending out two and one-half feet from the facade. The two flanking wings each have three bays. Each bay next to the center block extends out from the main wing facade. Each horizontal extended bay also extends vertically, creating a stepped roof line.