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(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories, I'm Mark McDonald in Hillsboro where they happen to be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Montgomery County's founding.

And that also coincidentally happens to be the 150th anniversary of the building of this Courthouse at Montgomery County here in Hillsboro.

If you've noticed I'm standing in one of our buddies, Abraham Lincoln, a John McClary creature here that came here in 2009.

We're also with Jeff Dunn who's with the County Historical Society.

And Jeff, it's fascinating to be able to be here.

200 years, that's a milestone!

- Yes, it's certainly is and we're really excited.

We've got many events planned and we've done a whole lot of work.

So we're really excited about it.

- I think with the virus and everything, I think the time is gonna work out for you so that maybe by the time summer comes, you can go ahead and unfold this anniversary the way you really wanted to when you planned it.

- Yeah, 'cause we planned on having it at the Butler Fairgrounds which is just an enormous, it's out in the country, it's an enormous area.

So there's plenty of room to spread out, and we've got a car show and a lot of other events like tractor show, and everybody's just super excited that we've got this plan.

- While we're here with it, tell us about this statue a little bit.

- The statue, it's titled Among Friends, and it's supposed to represent Abraham Lincoln riding into Hillsboro, and he's stretching his back after a long journey to Hillsboro.

And so we've installed this in 2009.

And it's positioned here so that you can have your photo taken with him with the historic Montgomery County Courthouse in the background.

- That's it really nice because John McClary has statues all over the country.

He's very well-known and he's from the Cape that caterer.

- Yeah, and so really nobody knows a whole lot about him.

So I've just shared your video and it's really wonderful to find out that he even had one in Russia.

- That's right, that's right, he is terrific.

Okay, let's concentrate on the Courthouse just a little bit.

Now we mentioned it's 150 years old this year, 2021.

Tell me about the style, a little bit about the architect as well.

- Okay, it was designed by Gordon P. Randall, and it was designed in 1868.

And not only did he do ours, he also did Morgan County and Jacksonville, both courthouses were designed at the same time by the same guy.

And we just basically have a scale-down kind of economy version of the same courthouse in Jacksonville.

Ours is brick and there's this almost entirely limestone.

So ours is not quite as ornate as theirs, but it's still just a beautiful building - It is beautiful, and it looks like it's in terrific condition.

- It is, they've really done an outstanding job of maintaining it.

Over the years, some of the ornate detail has been removed.

In 1952, there was a fifth story here on the west side tower.

And that was removed because there were slight tiles were falling off into the yard and it would have been so hard for them to actually get up there and restore the thing 'cause it was just massive structure, which we can look at a photo of that here in a little bit.

So that was removed in 1952.

And we also had, when the Courthouse was built, above the three windows on the peak up there we had the Goddess of Justice up there and no one knows what happened to her.

She originally had a pedestal up there and was about nine foot tall.

And we have one drawing showing her up there, but there's really no photos from the 1870s.

So we don't know what happened to her.

- That's a shame.

- Yeah.

And Jacksonville's is missing too.

Jacksonville had the same-- - Is that right?

- Yeah, probably the same.

'Cause I would imagine he had just one vendor to make-- - I would suspect that those would turn up somewhere unless they've been destroyed.

- Yeah, and the Jacksonville one, they said they suspected that within two years that her arms had fallen off because she was supposed to be holding scales and a sword, and that after that they don't really know what happened to her.

So that could have been the fate of ours too that since it was carved out of wood that it may have just deteriorated quickly and they removed it.

But up until 1983, her pedestal was still on the roof where she once stood.

So that would have really been just an amazing sight to be able to drive up Main Street here and seeing a statue on top of the building.

- Now we're gonna go in and you're gonna show us through part of the Courthouse.

But I noticed that in front of the Courthouse next to the flag pole, there's a birthday cake.

And I wanna get a closer look at that first, okay?

- Okay.

- Let's go up there.

Okay, Jeff, this birthday cake was a pretty neat idea.

And you really found a lot of material went on it, didn't you?

- Yeah, over the last 10 years with the Historical Society, people have given us a lot of photos.

So I took 148 of those photos and had them printed on our Bicentennial Birthday Cake.

So there's photos from all over Montgomery County.

And I tried to include industry and libraries and other public things that were important to the county.

- And now we're looking at the Courthouse which has that fifth floor that you told us that had been removed and you can see it on the top left there.

- Yes, and back in 1952, it had fallen into disrepair.

So the County Board decided that it would be best to just remove it from the Courthouse which is really unfortunate because it's just absolutely beautiful.

So they did end up removing it.

- This would be endlessly fascinating for somebody who was from here that just wanted to walk around and just sort of to get an overview of it.

- Yeah, and we've got Hillsboro.

Just thousands of likes on this, and people said that it basically takes 20 to 30 minutes to really go through and read all the photos because each one is tagged with its name or a little bit of a description of what it is.

- Well, you did a lot of homework to do that too because finding photos is one thing, but then labeling them as a whole another thing.

- Yes.

- That's terrific.

- So it really has worked out good and it gives people a reason to get out of the car and come over and take a look at it.

So we're gonna hopefully leave this up until late fall anyway.

- Sandy Leitheiser, now we're standing on the porch.

- Yes, sir.

- And if people had Courthouse business, most of them would have taken the main entrance.

I kind of like this because this is the entrance to the courtroom and a lot of people in today's age would not even have seen this part of the building, would they?

So that'll be the case to show us some portions.

- Yes, we're excited that you're here and we'd like to show you some portions of the building that are very--.

- Okay, let's step in.

Like I said, this would not have been the normal way to enter the Courthouse.

But if you were going up to the courtroom this is what you see, you'd see this marvelous grand staircase.

And it makes a statement.

And I understand that the stair treads come from Hillsboro factory.

- Right, actually in Litchfield.

- Litchfield Factory.

- Yes, yes.

And it's a car manufacturing company from Litchfield, and it is just a really unique.

And you're right, this is the entrance that folks would have used as they came to this building and went to the courtroom area.

- And we're gonna see the courtroom as we go along here.

Now it also had, this building had all throughout the first and second floors marked this black and white marble pattern.

- You are correct.

- And what a shame they took it up.

- It is, it is, it is sir.

And you know, through the years I've been in office since December of 1998, I've found that the County Boards have tried to use the office and the Courthouse in general for functionality.

So along the way, the historical integrity has diminished.

And that is a sad thing.

- It's not only Montgomery County.

I mean, with the drop ceilings, every place has been adapted because they have to save money on utilities and all those sorts of things.

- Right, and we take pride in telling our public that we use every inch of this building.

And you'll see throughout your time with us today that that's certainly true.

- Some of this is still uniquely period as it was when it was built.

And I'm talking about the vault that you're gonna take us to, show where it is.

- Sure, follow me.

Come on through.

Again, we're in the original portion of our historic Courthouse, and here is our employees only vault.

And if you want to, just step on in.

(knocking door) Yes.

- Look at the thickness of that door, it's all steel.

- Yes, it certainly is.

very, very heavy, something that we lock each night still.

- They had to protect 'cause this would have been really to protect it from not just security, but from fire, may fire from-- - Oh certainly, we've been told it's fireproof.

And as you look at the interior, you'll certainly see why it certainly is.

Vaulted ceiling, concrete, and it houses very, very precious original records.

And certainly the birth certificates from our county beginning in approximately 1862.

- Wow.

- Yes.

The birth certificates are here, as well as our military discharge records.

The oldest primarily being with World War I.

We have some prior military records in a book form in this same space, as well as some marriage record information and death certificate, the original death certificates starting in 1877.

So even though we've digitized a lot of these records, we take pride in having a nice safe space like this for the originals to remain.

- Well, Jeff, if you were going to court, you came up those steps that we just came up and this is where the court room was.

Now it's the County Board meeting room and there's a separate building where the court room is now, but for decades and decades, this was it.

- Yes, in 1994, they moved and built a new Courthouse behind us, and now this room is just used for the County Board room.

It's kind of been split down the end of the building.

They built some offices across the back to save space.

- Right, that wall that we see there, that would have been back about eight or 12 feet or so and there would have been windows put out onto the street.

- Yes, so the courtroom was actually, it was probably had eight rows of seats instead of four.

But the judges area is exactly the same as it used to be.

And this railing has never changed.

- It's original, the railing's original.

And the drop ceiling of course cuts about eight feet off the top.

- Yes, and in 1968 they did the remodel and they lowered the ceiling, put in air conditioning and other stuff.

And at that point in time, the paneling was dark brown and they had yellow shag carpeting.

So it's really something else that that's what they went with.

- But you were able to find some pictures of this when the ceiling was original and it had the chandeliers.

- Yeah, there were two large chandeliers.

So the medallions are still there and we'll look at pictures of those.

And the paint is just, it's very unusual because it was painted like three different tones of brown with orange and yellow.

It almost looks like a circus tent-- - That was the original thing?

- Yeah, and it's never been changed.

And we've kind of looked at it under magnification and it hasn't been changed.

But you're gonna be in for a surprise.

- And we can see it, we can see it.

Okay, what we need to do is go up.

Now let's go back here 'cause this was where the judges chambers and also the jury room was, right after you, sir.

- Thank you.

- And it's pretty tight back here.

But if we come around here.

Okay, judges chambers in there, right?

- Yeah, there's two offices here of judges chambers.

And that was like some type of a judges conference room up in the front area.

- And then this is interesting 'cause this skinny stairway goes all the way from the ground floor, all the way up to the fourth-- - Up to the fourth floor.

- Third floor - Well, actually fourth.

But it stops and it's not as decorated going up to the fourth floor attic, but it does go up all the floors.

- Yeah, and then this piece of wood, this winds all the way up?

(laughing) Wow.

- But what's unusual about this is I don't understand.

I mean, they've got radiators up there and how they would have gotten a huge conference table up there up this one-- - There's no room.

- No.

- There's no room, and you believe that this is original?

- Yeah, it is definitely original.

- I don't know how they did it either.

So that was where the jury would go to deliberate and also in some cases to sleep.

- Yeah, they had a jury sleeping quarters up on this side of the room, which was not very big.

So I don't know how they would have had 12 jurors sleep in there unless they had bunk beds.

But it's very interesting that at that point in time that they had a sleeping quarters set up for them.

- Well, let's go and take a look.

Okay?

- Okay.

- So jury deliberation happens here?

- Yes.

And this is really a pretty cool room if the public doesn't have a chance to get a look at.

But this is where all the jurors would come and deliberate.

And so without a doubt, they had a large conference table here in the middle of the room.

And this has by far, I mean, this is as high up as you can get in the Courthouse with windows that look out, the other side is is not really used for anything and it's just decorated, but this was actually in use, this part of the tower was.

- It's a great view because if you look straight out here, is this called Main Street?

- Yes.

- Okay.

You go down Main Street for as far as you can see.

And if you can imagine there would have been the street car or their electric car-- - Yeah, electric railway.

- Run right down the middle of the street.

- Yeah, the electric railway ran all the way up around the street and then it circled the Courthouse.

So over here on the west side of the Courthouse, you could actually board the the railway and ride either St. Louis or Danville, Illinois, or Peoria, or any point in between.

So if you wanted to go to the ballgame in St. Louis, you could jump on an electric train here and ride downtown.

So I believe that went out about 1928 or in the late 1920s, early 30s is when the electric railway went away.

But really, and it is a shame it's no longer there because I think a lot of people would utilize it now.

- Oh yeah.

We need to see that paint that you were talking about that the whole courtroom was painted in.

Okay, let's go see that.

- Okay.

- Okay, we're above the drop ceiling and we're behind that wall that we discussed.

This would have been the outdoor wall of the courtroom.

- originally it would have been, this was all part of the courtroom.

- In all of the courtroom wall, all the paint look like this?

- Yes.

- Oh my goodness!

- And it's all hand painted and each one of these is different, kind of took digital photos that overlaid them to see if it was a stencil.

And it isn't, there's major differences between each of these.

So they were all painted by hand.

And as you can see, there's actually a little shadows behind them too.

So it's really an unusual paint scheme, if you think about the courtroom being painted multiple shades of brown with orange and yellow along with a black and white checkered floor, I mean, it's really an unusual color scheme.

- I just wonder who dreamed it up.

I've never seen it even like it, I didn't like it.

- Yeah.

So I've got some photos that I'll send you that they show the entire courtroom above the suspended ceiling with the air conditioning units and stuff.

- But then this crown molding would have been throughout to this and is sort of covered up now, it's all.

- And so the ceiling of the original courtroom is wood, downstairs and a lot of the offices, it has tin covering the ceiling but up here it is wood.

And then there was one large air intake in the center of the room and then two big medallions where they had chandeliers.

And the chandeliers are now gone, so most of that stuff has disappeared over the years.

But we kind of looked at the paint fragments that were falling on the floor and it's never been repainted.

It's the original coat of paint, so it's just amazing that it lasted this long.

- It is amazing.

It is amazing that it lasted.

And it's just the strangest choice of colors.

- Yeah, and see this little section we're looking at here, this was a chimney that was removed in '83.

And so that's why we've got a little bit of water damage at this point here, but that's been since fixed.

But it really, the courtroom really would have been pretty spectacular when you consider how big it is.

It's just unreal that they went with this color scheme, it's just so crazy.

- Jeff, we just walked through a third floor window.

- Yes, this is an actually an addition that was added in 1912.

So right now we're in the original part from 1871 of the Courthouse.

And when the Courthouse was built, this is third floor area was the jail.

There were bars on the windows on three of these.

And there had to have been at least one or two cells up here.

There really aren't any plans from the building, so we really don't know that much about it.

But this is what originally was the jail up here on the third floor.

- And we kind of know that because if we look at these windows over here, the window on the right didn't have any bars on it, but we know the window in the middle they did have bars on it.

- And so did the back too.

- Okay, so we know that these were jail cells and we just don't know how they-- - How they laid it out.

- And how many there were, there may have been two, there may have been more if they were small.

Okay, and as we look at this window, now just down half block down, that's where the new jail is.

- Yes.

- Okay.

Okay, Jeff, we would step down two steps if this was the original floor plan, right?

- Yes, just a few years ago when they redid the Courthouse they raised the floor back here to make it handicapped accessible and then changed the way that the elevator exited.

But originally there was two steps that you had to walk up to get into to the old courtroom.

- The old courtroom, yeah And this is, I promise people would see where the sheriff's family resided.

They stayed onsite and it was typical on those days for a sheriff to do that.

And it was also typical for the sheriff's wife to do the cooking for the prisoners.

- Yes, so the prisoners were on the second floor now.

So the prisoners were up on the third floor, and there was a staircase here that went right up to the prisoners area.

So we figured that there's no blueprints showing how it was laid out, but the sheriffs would have had just a really modest area to live in, not very big, with a bedroom, possibly kitchen, living room, and a bathroom.

The bathrooms were put in and I believe 1902 and then upgraded in 1918, but there was a huge outhouse right out the back door too.

So if you were in the jury sleeping room, to get outside to go to the bathroom, it would have been quite a walk.

- Long break, long break.

Okay, so that office there would have been part of the sheriff's quarters, all of this area-- - Yeah, all of this area.

- And where your your restrooms are all, but like you say, that's only maybe a few hundred square feet.

It's just not much.

- Yeah, it's be very small.

- Yeah.

- So when they did the 1912 edition over here on the west side of the back corner of the Courthouse, that added considerable amount of new square footage to the building and gave them more office space.

When we were upstairs, they use that as the grand jury deliberation room was on the third floor.

And this was a school district, has been in the second floor back here.

And also the, I can't even think, the state's attorney's office was on the second floor for quite a while until they moved out in '94.

- Okay, got one more request.

I wanna go to the bottom and I wanna go to the top, bottom first.

Okay, let's do it.

Well, you got to kind of dark coming into the basement here, Jeff, but you can tell a lot about a building from the base, can't you?

- Yeah, this is really pretty unique because the entire Courthouse, all three floors are built with brick vaulted ceilings with I-beams in between so that they can do longer spans, but it's basically fireproof protection for the whole building.

And then above this, they poured concrete.

So like the floors and the all the upstairs are made out of concrete.

Even where the jail was, that has a concrete floor.

- So if a fire were to get started, it couldn't go here.

- It can't go too far, no.

It couldn't go anywhere.

And this vaults, again, we talked about security and we talk about safety and and fireproof, there's just vault every wall's got.

- Yeah, so they've up all these all up for us today so that we can cut a peak in them.

- Yeah, and records going well, who knows how far back but it's-- - 200 years worth of records.

And they've go to great lengths to maintain them.

And they've had some of the books rebound that were to make sure that they stay in good condition.

- Yeah, yeah.

And it's dry down here which is pretty remarkable.

I mean, when you talk about, well built, another vault here.

This would have been sort of a traffic way of some kind.

- Yeah, and from what I understand from the newspapers from C. W. BLISS, the publisher of the Montgomery News wrote about that the men between trials or whenever there was a break, they would come down here and hang out in the basement here and they would smoke and chew tobacco.

And it may have gotten a little-- - To a vial mail for this.

(laughs) - So basically the ladies had a lounge and three areas if they had children or whatever, that way they could get away and didn't have to hear all the stories and other things.

- Like that doorway right there, it looks like that might've been a getaway.

And again, here's another safe or vault that's a perfectly secure.

And back here would have been the boiler, right?

- Yes, the boiler and the old coal room.

And even the coal room has been converted for record storage.

And right in this area here we can see the original brick floor of the basement.

- Well, I'm gonna take a walk back there.

I don't know how far we can get but old boiler would have been here.

- And this was the coal room.

- The coal room.

- And now the treasure has most of her records stored back here.

And the records basically go back 200 years, and a lot of these have been rebound.

- Okay, one more stop, we've seen the basement, we've got to see the top.

- Okay.

- Okay, we got to get a view from up there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Well, Jeff you brought me to the top of the building.

We're on the fourth floor, as we looked at it in the beginning, we could see that that west tower had a fifth floor which was then removed.

So we're at the very top of the court.

- Yeah, right now we are the very top.

And originally, above us there was a fifth floor but that was removed in 1952.

So this is as high up as we can get.

- And a lot of other people have gotten up here too because you could see their signatures all over the place, everybody wants to be immortalized.

- Yes, so there's really just thousands and thousands of signatures up here that date back to the 1870s when the building was built.

And it's pretty neat because a lot of the names are recognizable and I'm friends with a lot of the people.

So it's pretty neat to go through and just read all the names, and somebody will write, "I painted the Courthouse in 1926."

Or "I repaired the roof in 1880."

So there's all sorts of neat stuff like that just inscribed down the walls up here.

And pretty much everybody evidently brought their own pencil 'cause most of it is in pencil.

It was a little bit in chalk.

But it is an interesting historical that needs to be preserved.

- Well, thank you, sir, it's been a great tour.

- Yeah, I really appreciate it and thank you for coming.

- Thanks everybody here for having us.

150 years old Montgomery County Courthouse, and for Montgomery County itself, they're celebrating the 200th anniversary and they'll be having a good time all year.

You're welcome to come.

With another Illinois Story in Hillsboro, I'm Mark MacDonald, thanks for watching (upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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