Midland County Courthouse

About this property

The Midland County Courthouse is a government building located at 301 West Main Street in Midland, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It is the only Tudor Revival style courthouse in the state and will have been in use for 100 years in 2026. Henry Ashmun rode his horse to the state capital in Lansing for permission from the state legislature to construct a courthouse in Midland City, home to 15 households in the county seat of Midland County. The legislature agreed to allow the board of supervisors and prosecuting attorney to select the new courthouse site. It appeared that nobody in the legislature bothered to determine who the prosecutor was or members of the board. If they had, they would have discovered Henry Ashmun in both positions. The property chosen may have been donated by Dr. Fitzhugh or owned by Ashmun. The tract was centrally located and to mark the location, stakes were driven into the ground on October 13, 1856. To celebrate, Timothy Jerome and Dan Davis came from Saginaw by boat to meet a group of Midlanders. They shared a bottle of champaign brought by Jerome, who designed the courthouse. Construction began the following year and was completed and occupied in 1858. The wood-framed structure utilized the Greco-Roman architectural style and cost $6,000. Discussions regarding a new courthouse began prior to 1920 because the current structure was "old-fashioned" and citizens wanted something more impressive. When Dr. Herbert Dow of the local Dow Chemical Company supported a new building, the decision was settled. Architect Bloodgood Tuttle from Detroit and Cleveland had designed a house for his son, Willard, so Dow engaged Tuttle for the design. Legal issues delayed the funding, but by 1924, only $180,000 of $220,000 had been raised. Dow made a proposal: he would pay for any costs over $180,000 if he was given authority to use Dow products and materials in the building. Saginaw's Spence Brothers were awarded a construction contract at the end of 1924 and construction commenced beside the existing courthouse. Paul Honore, a mural artist from Detroit was hired to create artwork on the exterior. Parts of the courthouse exterior are magnesite stucco (magnesium oxychloride), a product developed at Dow Chemical. A Dow employee worked with the artist to create the material. Normal stucco uses silex and sand; ground glass was substituted for sparkle and better color. The artist used a palette knife to create the murals that told Midland County's history with life-sized, 3-D figures. The 1858 Greco-Roman courthouse was razed in 1929 by Hiram Crane who used the salvaged lumber to construct three homes.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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