Nemaha County Courthouse

SAH Archipedia's entry by H. Keith Sawyers and Peter Olshavsky says Calvert and Sheridan merged as Auburn in 1882 to strengthen their bid for the county seat, and the square sits on high ground between the two former towns. It is laid out as a Harrisonburg Square, a street and block pattern named for the Virginia town and the only one in Nebraska. They count the building among the state's best Richardsonian Romanesque courthouses, with polygonal bays on the north and south walls and a restrained interior of unpainted woodwork, tile floors and pressed metal ceilings.

What the plaque says

Nemaha County Courthouse The Nemaha county seat was established at Brownville in March 1855 by the first territorial legi- slature. Brownville retained the county seat until an 1883 election approved its removal to Auburn, a town formed in 1882 by the merger of the adjacent villages of Sheridan and Calvert. The first courthouse in Auburn was a frame structure at this site, which soon proved inadequate. A series of elections culminated in 1899 with approval of $40,000 in bonds to build a new courthouse. That same year the county commissioners accepted a design by Nebraska architect George A. Berlinghof and construction began. Stone was quarried about five miles west of Auburn and brick was produced by a local brickyard. The cornerstone was laid on May 25, 1900, in a ceremony featuring former Nebraska Governor Robert W. Furnas. County offices moved into the new courthouse in December 1900. The symmetrical building with two main entrances, executed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, features corner towers, permanent materials, elaborate ornamentation, and reflects permanence and stability. In 1990 the Nemaha County Courthouse was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Nemaha County Development Alliance Nemaha County Lodging Tax Nebraska State Historical Society, 2010

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brownville — 9.9 mi
  A Missouri River town of 1854 that bet on a railroad and lost, kept its arts through the decline, and now has Nebraska's oldest repertory theatre and a 1932 steam dredge on the bank.
• Indian Cave State Park — 20 mi
  Wooded Missouri River bluffs in the old Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation, with carvings of animals cut into a sandstone shelter, the ghost town of St. Deroin and miles of trail.
• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park — 20 mi
  J. Sterling Morton's estate in Nebraska City, a four-room house of 1855 grown to 52 rooms among the trees he planted, home of the man who proposed Arbor Day in 1872.

More markers nearby

• Auburn Post Office Mural — 0.5 mi
• Half-Breed Tract — 1.3 mi
• Peru State College — 8.4 mi
• French Settlement of Julian — 9.5 mi