Boone County Courthouse

Madison, WV

The Boone County Courthouse was constructed in 1921 on a hillside site in a small square above State Street in the town of Madison. A prime example of the Neo-Classical Revival style popular in the early years of the 20th century, the Boone County Courthouse is a stately, monumental, three-story building, faced with Indiana limestone. The style of the Boone County Courthouse conveys the public function of the building with references to the classical architecture of antiquity and the early years of the nation. The necessary components of the style are evidenced in the smooth, unembellished wall surfaces, the arched windows of the first floor, and the symmetrical composition centered upon porticoes with monumental flights of stairs much like the temple fronts of antiquity. Of particular note is the open-domed belvedere above the central mass. Architect H. Rus Warne was a student in the Beaux-Arts tradition, having studied in Paris and Rome and would have been very familiar with traditional classical architectural forms. Much like the famous architect, Cass Gilbert, who a year after this building was completed, would choose to design the State Capitol in Charleston in the same style, Warne recognized the stylistic power of refined classicism for public architecture. -- JWM (from the WV Division of Culture and History)