County of building: Lawrence County
location of building: 23 Public Square
Historic Occupant: Unknown
Occupant at listing: Unknown
Current Occupant: Vacantl
Building built: ca. 1905
In the photo gallery the one on the left is the building listed, the one on the right is (NC) due to construction date (1945).
"26. 23 Public Square
ca. 1905
One-part commercial block. One-story brick, concrete block
foundation, rectangular plan, stuccoed walls, Mesker Iron Works
storefront, clay tile cornice, recessed entry. (C)" ~ NRHP Nomination Form
"The city of Lawrenceburg is situated on a 400 acre tract of land which the
North Carolina legislature granted to John Thompson on April 14, 1792. An
act of the General Assembly of Tennessee, passed on November 23, 1819,
later confirmed this initial land claim. When the new county's seven
commissioners (including David Crockett) selected a seat of government in
1819, they chose Thompson's parcel, largely because it laid squarely on the
route of the Military Road, an important federally-supported 516 mile long
thoroughfare from Columbia to New Orleans. The land also stood only four
miles southeast of the county's geographic center.
The new town was arranged around a central square, two acres in area, being
sixteen poles wide (east to west) and twenty poles long. (This makes the
public square a rectangle, actually.) The four main streets branching from
the square were each four rods, or 66 feet, wide. Streets and lot lines
were run at magnetic variation of 13 degrees north, rather than oriented to
true north. The four main streets were Pulaski (headed eastward), Waterloo
(headed westward), and running north to south, North and South Military
streets. At the center of the square, where the streets would meet, stood
the county courthouse lot. The initial courthouse was a two-story brick
courthouse that was first occupied in 1821.
The square initially was divided into sixteen large lots, with those on the
north and south sides having a frontage of 49 1/2 feet wide by 132 feet
deep while those on the east and west sides were 66 feet wide and 99 feet
in length. The lot arrangement currently found in the public square dates
to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when several of the
initial large city lots were subdivided into smaller parcels to make way
for new businesses and offices.
"The nominated district includes all of the historic public square area.
Ironically the most important missing element is the courthouse itself. In
the 1960s, the county demolished a circa 1905 courthouse, replacing it with
a strikingly modern courthouse on West Gaines Street. The lot for the
courthouse, along with historically significant monuments to David Crockett
and the Mexican War, is still intact in the center of the square. This
area presently serves as a city park, complete with landscaping, a
fountain, and park benches.
"Contributing resources (C) are significant to the commercial and
architectural development of the district, possess compatible design
elements, and maintain the scale and use of the district. Non-contributing
resources (NC) have little or no architectural significance, have lost
their integrity or they do not fall within the period of significance. In
the inventory, the current name of the building is given first and the
historic name, when known, is listed second. ~ NRHP Nomination Form