Renovations underway at historic Madras courthouse
Last-minute purchase saved building from demolition
Threatened with demolition as recently as December, the 97-year-old former Jefferson County Courthouse has won a reprieve and is undergoing major renovations.
Located on D Street a half block east of the northbound lanes of U.S. Highway 97, the old courthouse was declared surplus by Jefferson County commissioners in September, citing engineering reports suggesting it was unsafe and impractical to repair. No bidders made an offer on the building, but in December, Steve Jansen offered $10,000 to take it off the county’s hands.
Jansen, 68, said he’d had his eye on the building for some time, and had become convinced it was fixable when others said it was not. A telephone company employee who turned to fixing up rental houses in retirement, Jansen said he doubts he’ll ever make any money off the building despite the rock-bottom purchase price — but, he may just be able to save it.
“The next step would have been the wrecking ball, and it’s got too much history and age on it to let that happen,” he said.
Despite the Madras City Hall sign at the top of the building, it never actually served as the base of city government, Jansen said. As the story goes, the building was completed shortly after Madras was selected as the permanent county seat, and county government relocated there from Culver.
After the completion of the current courthouse in 1961, the courtroom on the top floor of the building was vacated. Various county offices and the Oregon State University Extension Service have occupied the building since, and from the 1970s through last year, it housed the Jefferson County Historical Society’s museum.
Touring the building on Friday, Jansen showed off the work he’s already done, shoring up nearly half of the deteriorating foundation, and ripping out aged drywall and ceiling panels. Heading up the stairs, he paused to shine his flashlight at a row of decorative brass elements where the staircase meets the wall, then bounded up a few more steps and launched into a story about the layout of the old courtroom.
“The building’s not that decrepit, it just looked bad,” he said. “Most of it was superficial, but it’s a lot of work.”
Jansen said he’s heard some criticism that the county essentially gave the building away for free, but insists it was a better deal for the county than it was for him.
Demolishing the building would have been costly, he said, and public bidding processes would have made it nearly impossible for the county find a cost-effective way of renovating it.
“If they would have paid me $10,000 to take it off their hands, it still would have been too expensive,” he said. “I’m already into this three times what I paid, and I’m just getting started.”
The building’s basement has revealed a cache of oddities left behind when the Jefferson County Historical Society vacated the place, putting its collection in storage until a new museum can be constructed.
As he worked his way through the basement, Jansen said he plans to hold onto the items should the museum one day want them back. So far he’s located — among other things — a vintage medical breathing apparatus, a leg brace he suspects belonged to a polio victim, and a massive iron bell that most likely came from an old schoolhouse in Madras or Ashwood.
The basement also revealed two large iron doors, once used to seal the safes used by the sheriff and the court. With great difficulty and a little help, he brought the doors upstairs and put them back in place.
“It took four of us, and we all threw our backs out,” Jansen said, fingering the combination lock on the safe door once used by the Sheriff’s Office. “It’s about 400 pounds, I figure.”
Jansen’s purchase also includes the first Jefferson County jail, located just north of the courthouse. Built in 1918, the tiny building contains two small two-man cells, a single toilet and wood-fueled furnace, and a small perch above the cells where the jailer slept.
As best as Jansen has been able to determine, the historic jail and the current courthouse across the street are linked through one of Central Oregon’s most infamous crimes, the 1961 murder of two children who were thrown off the Crooked River Gorge.
The children’s mother, Gertrude Jackson, and her lover and accomplice, Jeannace Freeman, were the last inmates housed in the historic jail and the first tried in the then-new courthouse, Jansen said. Freeman was the first woman sentenced to death in Oregon, but had her sentence reduced to life when voters repealed the death penalty. She was paroled in 1985, but was back in prison when she died in 2003. Jackson testified against Freeman, and was released from prison after serving seven years.
For now the jail is well down the list of renovations Jansen still has to tackle, but by the Madras centennial in 2017, he hopes to have it cleaned up and restored to allow for tours.
At the courthouse building, work is proceeding briskly. If Jansen stays on track with mostly cosmetic repairs like pulling out the old carpet and restoring the wood floors, he expects to have it ready to market as office space in about a month. The upstairs eventually will be restored to how it looked when it served as a courtroom, he said, and offered as a daily rental for weddings or community events.
Outside on the courthouse lawn, Jansen glanced across the street to the current county courthouse — itself scheduled for replacement sometime in the next few years — shook his head, and wondered how it’s possible his building could outlast the one built to replace it.
“This building, I’m only shooting for another 97 years, if it doesn’t make it, sue me,” he said. “Of course, as old and cantankerous as I am, I may still be alive.”