May, 2022
Yikes. No, I didn’t get arrested, honest. I didn’t do it! Honest! I didn’t even get a parking ticket. Honest! 🙂
But what I did do is go visit the local County Courthouse, just to get a look at the place. I’m a retired Paralegal and have spent a good deal of time in courthouses in the past, so I tend to look up the local courthouse wherever I travel and check it out. This one was great.
You’ll remember that yesterday I got sidetracked by a bunch of ponies and horses, so I never did get to my original destination yesterday. Today I got there … this wonderful, historic Courthouse.
It’s in the small town of Montesano, WA, in Grays Harbor County, WA. I had always assumed that Aberdeen, the largest town in the county, would be the center of county administration. But it isn’t. The second largest town is Hoquiam, but it doesn’t host the county offices either. Montesano is the third largest town, and that’s where Grays Harbor County offices and courts are. Montesano was established as the county seat back in 1854 and it has continued as such ever since.
The Courthouse and administration building (below) was built in 1911. HERE is a link to historic information about this building.
The clock face is eight feet tall! That’s just the diameter of the white circumference around the clock face, and doesn’t include the concrete around it.
Take a look HERE for cool information about the clock.
I was here two years ago, hoping I could get inside to see this buiding. But COVID had recently hit and no one who wasn’t on official business was allowed inside the building. Today, they let me in. I thought it might be a boring old building, but it was fascinating and beautiful with solid marble staircases, solid brass handrails, and fantastically curved ceiling structures, not to mention very old and historic paintings on the walls. (click on photos to enlarge them)
From the very middle of the building, looking straight up, there was this impressive set of four glass paintings. I had a hard time not falling down the stairs as I turned to photograph each panel.
The detail of the construction was truly amazing. Solid marble (huge sheets of it), solid dark metal that had obviously been hand-worked and burnished, solid wood carved handrails, and solid brass handrails as well.
And then there were the decades old paintings on the walls, some of which have fallen off the wall because of earthquakes and age, and yet they have been restored and then put back on the walls at great expense to the county. Yes, the “indians” were depicted as being dressed like the more “popular” mid-western plains indians with head-dresses and breech-cloths and peace pipes and such, whereas Pacific Northwest native people didn’t dress that way. And often in these paintings the white guys were standing and the indians were sitting on the ground below the white guys … but that’s not how it really was back then.
The lighting was oil originally. When they updated the lights to electricity, they kept the original oil fixtures, although they disabled the “oil” part of them. In the photo below, you can see the original oil tank and valve at the top of the light fixture. The original fixture is solid brass.
And then there were what seemed to me to be millions of miles of intricate wood moldings, on every floor, every ceiling, every post, every staircase. I wondered about the crafts-people who created all of that wood molding and the time it took them to do that.
But wait … this isn’t wood! Not one inch of it. The walls are wood, or wood panels, but the yellow molding is sandstone, molded sandstone. Back in the mid-1800’s and later, it was less expensive to create this type of molding than to construct detailed wooden molding.
Do I believe that? I don’t know. I can’t find any information online to dispute what I read in the documentation I was handed when I was there. But the information available in the Courthouse definitely said that.
Today, there are a myriad of automated tools used to create such moldings in wood. But back in the 1800’s there was nothing but a chisel and your hands/arms. So maybe pouring sandstone into pre-fab molds really was less time-consuming and less expensive and resulted in the perfect look that exists today in this building.
At the start of this blog post, I mentioned the “opportunity” of getting arrested. And no, I’d done nothing illegal and wasn’t even suspected. But there was an old jail building right next door. It was a three-story building, just like the Courthouse, but the jail building was in significant disrepair. I didn’t feel a deep need to get into that building (I’m innocent, I swear!), but I bet it has stories to tell.
Oh, darn, I forgot to take a photo of the damage from the gunshots near the front door of the Courthouse. There absolutely is a dent in the solid wood panel wall inside the main door of the courthouse, and then another dent in a metal panel nearby, after a prisoner grabbed a police officer’s gun and then shot his way out of the courthouse. No one was hurt, and the prisoner was subsequently detained. But the marks on the wall are still there.
I didn’t do it, honest! I’m innocent!
No, Ann didn’t do it, honest, she’s innocent, she was with all of her blog readers whenever it happened, whatever happened, who knows what happened or when? But we know that Ann didn’t do it. 🙂
Thanks David. I’ll be sending you a check in the mail. 🙂
I swear! Ann was with us/me all the time. I swear! Ok, maybe not so much swearing. 🙂 Fun blog post. And that truly is a very impressive courthouse given that’s in such a small county. Fantastic clock tower.
Ha! Thanks Nebraska. Oh, go ahead and swear, it’s all good. 🙂
Great tour, Ann. It’s amazing the beauty of the past that we often pass by without noticing. You always have the knack for helping us open our eyes to the beauty around us.
Oh gosh, thanks Kathie. Very nice words. And … it’s true, I think, about the beauty of this world that we often overlook. I have friends who hike … I wander. I can spend 15 minutes taking one photo of one flower. Or one photo of one particular wall in a courthouse. There’s so much to see. I hope I live a long time. And I hope you do too. 🙂
That is impressive!
Amen! 🙂
You find such cool stuff, in places where I sure would never have thought to look. And your photos are super. And you obviously spend a great deal of time getting detailed info. This was fascinating. I love this blog!
Thanks, Pat. Really nice words. 🙂
Why didn’t we ever find such great things to see and learn when hubby and I were RVing? We should have been following Ann! So the lesson is to stop and poke around, stay in small towns and poke around, ask people, talk with people. We mostly did go to small towns but we mostly just stayed in our campground going into town to get groceries or do laundry, but we rarely REALLY talked with local folks. I bet there’s lots to see and do in any community. Even just the ponies! 🙂 Thanks Ann. Where will you take us next?
Ha! I don’t know Wanda. Why don’t we “see” things? And yes, I do talk LOTS with local folk, but still … stop and look, stop and look again, turn around and look again, take a breath and look again, smell the air, listen to the birds, look again. Yep, go do your laundry … but then ask the person who works there what you should go see. Ponies, goats, mountains, a lake, a farm, music, kittens, a courthouse … who knows where we’ll go next? 🙂
So much important history, and so much fun too. I’ve heard of powdered sandstone sculpting/forms for wood-like molding, especially in areas of the USA where there aren’t huge forests, such as the desert southwest, but I’ve not seen that sort of work nor those sorts of installations. I hope the information they gave you was accurate and that this is a excellent example of that type of work. And I too swear that Ann is innocent, she was with us the whole time! Innocent! 🙂
Thanks Bill … a check is in the mail for your sworn testimony that I’m innocent. 🙂
I keep learning things that I’ve never heard of before, like this powdered sandstone sculpting. Fun stuff.
This was absolutely gorgeous. Both the building and your photos. Kathie Torgison is right, you seem to take me places I would never think of going and, even if I did go there, I wouldn’t stop and look like you do or bother to research the details in order to appreciate what I was looking at. Thank you!
Thanks Ruth. Let’s just keep on heading down the road and seeing what there is to see and to learn. I’m sure glad you’re on the road with me. 🙂
I tend to enjoy the outdoor blog posts the most, boating the very most, but this was great too. Fantastic curved ceilings and walls. I just now asked my uncle about powdered sandstone molding. He was in construction in the early 1900s. He said yes they did that! But today it’s either wood or solid stone. Cool stuff. 🙂 Gave me something to talk about with my uncle, took him 40 minutes to finally wind down on the phone, but I’m going to go get him this weekend and we’ll go look at some old buildings that he helped design and build. He doesn’t have a computer, but I’m bringing my laptop and will show him this blog post. Thanks for creating the connection Ann. Really appreciate it. Go see more old stuff. 🙂 And absolutely you are innocent! You never did it! I swear!
Your uncle knows about powdered sandstone molding? That is great! That supports what the documents said at this courthouse. Your uncle is cool. 🙂
And you are too, Rob. Please say hi to your uncle from all of us. What he did in his life is extremely important. Everything we have today is built on what we had yesterday.
And yes, I’m innocent! A check is in the mail. 🙂
Wow, that’s impressive. I looked up Montesano WA online, only about 4,000 residents. Small town but what a gorgeous courthouse, and well maintained.
I didn’t realize how small Montesano is, Greg. It certainly is a small town, but my gosh, it’s small. Makes that courthouse even more impressive, doesn’t it. And yes, the courthouse is exceptionally well maintained … obviously appreciated.
Such a gorgeous building!
Wasn’t that so impressive!? I was amazed.