Howard County Courthouse

Andreas's 1882 history says the county commissioners held their first meeting on the town site on May 9, 1871, and proclaimed the county seat there. The settlers had voted to call the town Athens; when the Post Office Department refused a second Athens in Nebraska, Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock suggested St. Paul, after the founding Paul brothers. In 1874 Dannebrog's new Sentinel and St. Paul's Advocate fought the removal question in print. St. Paul won, 226 votes to 206, and a justice of the peace named Baxter dismissed Dannebrog's contest.

What the plaque says

Howard County Courthouse The first homestead claim in Howard County was filed on March 11, 1871. St. Paul was appointed the county seat in May, and retained that title over Dannebrog in a close 1874 election. A wooden court- house was built in St. Paul in 1877. By June 1912, residents favored replacing the "wooden shack that has been a leftover from the sod house and grasshopper period." Voters approved a $75,000 stone courthouse for the same site. The new building was designed by Lincoln architect George Berlinghof, a German immigrant. The cornerstone was laid on June 5, 1913. Financial difficulties resulted in sporadic construction, and the courthouse was $28,000 over budget when it opened in November 1914. Though predominantly brick, the Classical Revival style building has a foundation and columns of Indiana limestone, stairs of pale pink marble, railings of solid white marble, and floors of terrazzo. The Grand Army of the Republic monument to Civil War veterans was dedicated on July 4, 1919. The Howard County Courthouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. Chester D. and Elda F. Miller Fund Nebraska State Historical Society, 2019

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 23 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.

More markers nearby

• Grover Cleveland Alexander — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of St. Paul — steps away
• St. Wenceslaus Catholic Cemetery, Warsaw — 5.9 mi
• Dannebrog, Nebraska's Danish Capital — 8.1 mi