Fulton County Courthouse (Illinois)

The Fulton County courthouse, of which the east-facing section was built in 1897–1898, is a Beaux-Arts structure with a façade of cut limestone. A building theme of welcoming archways is repeated at the main entrance, on an upper floor with a large ceremonial window, and on the building's cupola and clock tower.^[3]

In the 1970s, Fulton County built a major addition to the west of the original building. The addition maintains the height lines and much of the style of the original courthouse.^[3]

Three earlier Fulton County courthouses have disappeared. The first courthouse was a log cabin (1823); the second was a frame structure (1826, cost $649), and the third was a wood, brick, and stone courthouse (1837–1838, cost $9,000).^[3]

The vanished third courthouse was extensively referenced by onetime local resident Edgar Lee Masters, who was also a practicing attorney. Masters used local locations, including the courthouse, in his poetic cycle Spoon River Anthology (1915). Spoon River flows through Fulton County, and the poet repeatedly refers to the futility of legal ethics as compared to the omnipotent cycles of creation and destruction. The destruction of the third courthouse by arson on December 13, 1894, is described as an example and allegory of this point of view.^[4] Although they had mixed feelings about Masters himself, the people of Lewistown understood this perspective. They hauled two large surviving stone columns from the razed courthouse to stand sentinel at the local Oak Hill Cemetery,^[4] a focal location of the “Anthology.”

40°23′49″N 90°9′20″W / 40.39694°N 90.15556°W / 40.39694; -90.15556