Mahoning County‘s Lost Gothic Courthouse
The story of Mahoning County’s Lost Gothic courthouse begins with the second phase of Youngstown’s struggle to become the county seat of its county. The first phase began near the turn of the nineteenth century before there was a Mahoning County. At the time Youngstown was located in what was then Trumbull County. Warren was the county seat of Trumbull County but the citizens of Youngstown thought that honor should be theirs. The fight to have Youngstown named county seat of Trumbull County ended in 1846 when the Ohio Legislature created Mahoning County out of parts of Trumbull and Columbiana Counties. Much to Youngstown’s chagrin, however, Canfield was named the county seat of the new county. Thus began the second phase of the fight for county seat honors.
For some time Youngstown resigned itself to its fate, but by 1872 the old frustrations had come back to dominate local politics. The residence of Youngstown railed at the comparison. Youngstown was a thriving city. It was an industrial center and had a population of over 10,000. It paid one-fourth the county taxes and generated more than half the litigation in the county courts. It had rail links and accommodated traffic on the Mahoning River. Canfield, by contrast, was still a small farming community with access only by horse and buggy.
The election of 1873 was dominated by the removal issue. Shelden Newton of Boardman township ran on a platform to secure “removal” — transferring the county seat from Canfield to Youngstown. His opponent, C.F. Kirtland of Poland, favored “retention”, — keeping the county seat in Canfield. Mr. Newton won, and at the next meeting of the legislature he introduced a bill to remove the county seat from Canfield to Youngstown.
The bill was passed in April of 1874, by one vote. Canfield supporters had, however, forced a provision which they were sure would sabotage the effort. The act provided that before the removal could take place a majority of the voters of the county had to favor it. More importantly, the citizens of Youngstown were required to provide “adequate buildings” for the county, but were prohibited from using tax revenues for this purpose.
A committee was appointed at a convention in August, 1874, and the work of subscribing funding for the new courthouse was begun. Citizens and businesses in Youngstown gave generously. Led by prominent industrialist Chauncey Andrews, they soon raised $100,000 for the new structure. Chauncey Andrews personally guaranteed payment of much of the funds. Construction started in 1874. The site chosen was the hill on the corner of Wick Avenue and Wood Street. The two lots were formerly used for a township cemetery. The City Council essentially donated the land, valued at $40,000, accepting only a token payment of $10.00. The election of 1875 decided in favor of removal by an overwhelming majority. With this victory work of completing the structure was hurried through.
Canfield had no intention of giving up. Having lost the political battle, it decided to try the courts. Under the leadership of Judge Eden Newton, Canfield filed a petition in the district court of the county asking for an injunction against removing the county seat to Youngstown. As grounds for the injunction the Petitioners cited the law of 1848 which created Mahoning County. It referred to the village of Canfield as the “permanent” location of the county seat. As such, they argued, the Removal Act of 874 was unconstitutional.
The use of the term was no accident. It was a leftover vestige of the earlier fight between Warren and Youngstown for county seal honors. When it seemed inevitable that a new county was to be created, Warren entered into an alliance with Canfield in order to frustrate its old enemy. The term was meant to insure that Youngstown would always be denied its rightful position as county seat. But the trick did not work.
The District Court ruled that the law of 1846 could not mean that Canfield should be the county seat forever, as this would deny the legislature the power to regulate the government, which would render the law of 1848, on which Canfield based its claim, unconstitutional.
Still not deterred, Canfield appealed to the State Supreme Court, which upheld the transfer in 1876. The courthouse was completed that same year. A new jail was also constructed off of Wood Street, to the rear and east of the courthouse.
The residents of Youngstown and county officials wasted no time in removing county records from Canfield. Some reports have it that the citizens of Youngstown stole the records in the dead of night, after first having lured prominent citizens of Canfield to a party south of the village. Most historians dispute this, stating that the transfer took place in broad day-light, and that Canfield residents even participated.
In either case it was certainly a monumental task. As many as forty wagons and two hundred teams of horses were used to transfer all the county books and records. Included in the caravan was a custom built wagon pulled by five teams of horses. It was specially designed by Youngstown carriage maker John Duth to haul the 10 ton county safe.
The second Mahoning County Courthouse was truly a remarkable structure. Constructed at a cost of $125,000 it was meant, much like the present-day courthouse, to display the wealth and grandeur of the city. Built in the style known as high Victorian Gothic, it sported large imposing towers and “gingerbread” trim. Its base was made of large granite stone, its facade of brilliant red brick. The main entrance faced Wood Street, which provided access to the first floor and basement. A single large court room and jury rooms took up most of the second floor, while the third and fourth stories were used for county offices. Perched high on Wick hill, the whole structure received good natural light from the rear along the sloping grade towards the South. The building was a show place for visitors and often shown in early photographs of the city.
The courthouse shared the corner with the First Presbyterian Church, across Wood Street, the Elks Club, across Wick, and Rayen School, catty-corner across Wick. Citizens of Youngstown were fond of saying that their city offered education, sanctification. justification, and damnation, all at the same crossroads.
In 1877 the Courthouse yard was the scene of the only legal execution in Youngstown’s history. On April 21 of that year, Charles Theodore Sterling was hanged for murdering a 14-year-old girl. Sterling had been taken from Canfield the year before, along with other wards and county chattels.
Meanwhile, Canfield continued its legal battle to regain the county seat. Following its defeat in the Ohio Supreme Court in 1876, Canfield appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was represented by prominent attorney, and soon to be President, James A. Garfield.
Youngstown retained General Thomas W. Sanderson to represent its interests. General Sanderson was a Youngstown native well versed in the removal issue. He, along with Asa W. Jones, oversaw the transfer of records from Canfield to Youngstown earlier that same year. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in 1879 and confirmed the State Court decision, thus ending the controversy once and for all.
For nearly 30 years the courthouse served its purpose well, but by 1905 the need for a new structure was obvious. The city’s population had grown to approximately 70,000; the county’s population was 100,000. With the increase in population came a corresponding increase in litigation and bureaucracy. The County had simply outgrown the building.
In comparison to the controversy surrounding its construction, the demise of the second courthouse was remarkable routine. In 1908 the question of erecting a new structure carried easily. The county seat was officially moved to the third and present-day Common Pleas Courthouse in 1911. Thereafter, the second courthouse building stood abandoned and derelict, its ornamental trim in bad need of repair, its once bright exterior blackened by soot from decades of exposure to nearby blast furnaces.
The precise year of the structure’s demolition is unclear. In 1916 the County Commissioners sold the building to James A. Henderson for $100,000. Mr. Henderson planed on razing it to erect a three story structure to house his overland agency, but the “Old Tower” may have stood for as long as another decade. The site was excavated in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s to eliminate the grade crossing and move the Erie Rail Road tracks closer to Wood St. The Wick Avenue Bridge was completed late in 1936.
For many years all that remained of the once venerable structure was a few large foundation stones facing Wood Street, which were incorporated into the cement walk-way which ran along Wood and Wick. These too were removed in January of 1992, when the area was re-graded following the elimination of the bridge and the back-fill of Wick Avenue hill.
Gary J. Rosati, Member, Mahoning County Bar Association Historical Committee.