Burke County Courthouse

About this property

The current Burke County Courthouse is located at 201 South Green Street, Morganton, Burke County, North Carolina and operates as the courthouse for Burke County. It was opened in 1976 to replace the Old Burke County Courthouse. The old courthouse, in use by 1837, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Old Burke County Courthouse is the historic courthouse building located at 102 East Union Street in Morganton. It was built in 1833–1835 at cost of $15,000, and is a two-story, square stone building on a raised basement in the Classical Revival style. It features pedimented porticos on two sides and an elaborate cupola added during a remodeling in 1901. Shortly before the end of the American Civil War a detachment of Union cavalry raided the building in April 1865, as part of Stoneman's 1865 Raid, and destroyed much of the county's records. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. and is located in the Morganton Downtown Historic District. The Old Burke County Courthouse is the historic courthouse at 102 East Union Street on the courthouse lawn in the center of Morganton, North Carolina. It houses the old courtroom, used for lectures, meetings and events as well as the Heritage Museum and office of Historic Burke Foundation, Inc. "In 1830, the Burke County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions decided that the County needed a new courthouse to replace the "shabby, weather-beaten" plank courthouse that had been built on the public square in 1791. The General Assembly of 1830-31 authorized it to spend $8,000 and named five commissioners to oversee the construction. In the 1832-33 sessions, the General Assembly increased the amount to $12,000. James Binnie, a Scottish builder, was awarded the contract in 1833. He built the courthouse of native stone quarried on the Forney plantation about four miles north of Morganton. Frederick Roderick, a German stonemason who later established his home in Burke County, assisted Mr. Binnie with the construction. The building was put into use in 1837. From 1847 until 1862, the North Carolina Supreme Court held its August session in the courthouse for the convenience of lawyers from the western part of the state who were arguing appeals from the Superior Courts of their respective counties. In 1851, Morganton attorney and politician William Waightstill Avery shot and killed Samuel Fleming, a man with whom Avery had been in a dispute with over a lawsuit a few weeks earlier in another county, in the courthouse only a few feet away from the judge's bench (court was in recess). Avery was tried for murder but found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.

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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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