Cherokee County Courthouse

About this property

The Cherokee County Courthouse is a historic courthouse in Murphy, North Carolina, United States, the county seat of Cherokee County, that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The courthouse is located at the corner of Bill Hughes Avenue and Peachtree Street. The Classical Revival building, built in 1926 to a design by James J. Baldwin, was the second built on the site. The prior courthouse on the site burned twice, but after the second fire was not salvageable. The blue marble-faced two story building has a five-bay diagonal section facing the roadway that forms its entrance. It has a four-columned Corinthian Greek portico and is topped by a monumental cupola which rises 132 feet (40 m) above the structure. The floors are marble. The courthouse is one of only a few in the United States built from marble quarried in its own county. The building’s interior, especially its courtroom, has retained much of its original woodwork and stone styling. Cherokee County has a list of former courthouses either destroyed by fire or replaced by improved models. The first courts in the county were held at Fort Butler, which was constructed as a holding area for the Cherokee Native Americans during the Trail of Tears. In 1844 Archibald Russell Spence Hunter, a prominent merchant and the first postmaster in the area, had the first brick courthouse constructed on the current public square. Right after the Civil War ended, Murphy’s courthouse was burned down on May 4, 1865, by the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry under the command of Union Col. George Washington Kirk. Kirk did not yet know of the Confederacy’s surrender. Some of the raiders reportedly had pending criminal cases stored inside the courthouse. Murphy’s third courthouse was constructed in 1868 by reusing the brick from the first courthouse. It was a square, two-story building that the county quickly outgrew. In 1892, a fourth, larger courthouse was built on the site of the current marble courthouse at the corner of Central and Peachtree streets, down the road from the traditional public square where previous courthouses sat. It was also constructed of brick, had a clock tower, offices on the first floor, a courtroom on the second floor, and fireproof vaults. On December 12, 1895, an accidental fire burned much of the building. An inspection determined the remaining walls were sturdy enough to restore, and the rebuilt courthouse opened in 1896. On January 16, 1926, the courthouse was again destroyed by fire. An investigator concluded a janitor accidentally started the fire after lighting a match in the ladies’ room to look for supplies. The custodian denied that and said he instead found the flames in a supply closet. Bricks salvaged from the fire were in 1927 used to build the chimney for the John C. Campbell Folk School's iconic Community Room. After three courthouse fires, county leaders decided to build the next building on the same site using an inflammable material: blue marble. The blue marble was brought from nearby quarries in the town of Marble less than 10 miles (16 km) away. It was constructed at a cost of $256,000 and was dedicated on November 12, 1927.

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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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