Fredericksburg, VA Courthouse circa 1860
Posted by: 
garmin_geek
N 38° 18.113 W 077° 27.583
18S E 284915 N 4242172
Fredericksburg, VA city courthouse looking Northeast on Princess Anne Street.
Waymark Code: WM9E6D
Location: Virginia, United States
Date Posted: 08/09/2010
Views: 5
Circa 1860
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2011
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"The first courthouse on the site of the current courthouse for the Circuit Court for the City of Fredericksburg was built between 1736 and 1740. The early courthouse was built of brick and modeled after an English town hall (similiar to the Hanover County, Virginia, courthouse which still stands today). Among the attorneys to practice law in the original building were James Monroe, John Marshall and Bushrod Washington. The 1768 trial of the Baptist Dissenters may have been the most famous trial held in the old building.
The present courthouse, designed by James Renwick in the French Gothic style, was completed in 1852, replacing the original building which was demolished. James Renwick later designed "The Castle" of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The current courthouse has been renovated twice - once shortly after World War II and, to a lesser extent, in 1991/2.
The courthouse tower houses a six hundred pound bronze bell made at the Paul Revere Foundry in Boston, one of one hundred and thirty-four surviving Revere Foundry bells and the only known Revere bell in Virginia. The bell was donated to the Corporation of Fredericksburg in 1828 by Silas Wood, of New York, who married Miss Julia Ann Chew Brock of Fredericksburg in 1816."
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