Contributed by Mel Ring
Title: Huntington Courthouse Centennial
Location: Huntington County Courthouse
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2008-08-23
Huntington County will celebrate its Courthouse Centennial on August 23 with activities beginning in and around the building at noon and a formal program at 1 p.m. The featured speaker will be The Honorable Paul D. Mathias, presiding judge of the Third District of the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Volunteer members of The Courthouse Centennial Committee have been working on the observance for more than two years. The committee discovered in its research that the building, completed in 1908, had never been officially dedicated. Members of the Huntington County Board of Commissioners will dedicate the building during the Aug. 23 ceremonies.
In an effort to make the day as it might have been a hundred years ago, citizens are invited to bring a picnic lunch to enjoy on the courthouse lawn. There will be music and displays, tours of the building’s courtrooms and offices, and everyone will be treated to ice cream and cake. Nick’s Kitchen, which is also celebrating its centennial as a restaurant in downtown Huntington, will serve its famous breaded pork tenderloins at the event.
Huntington County’s court house was one of many in Indiana that was built during the decades around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. There appeared to be a competition among counties to build the most beautiful building and residents of Huntington County boast that theirs is one of the best in the state. The well-maintained old building, constructed of Indiana limestone, features an eagle made up of 100,000 tiles inlaid in the floor beneath the rotunda.
Huntington County is named after Samuel Huntington, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A bust of Samuel Huntington has been commissioned by members of the Huntington County Bar Association and will be installed in the courthouse rotunda after its completion by Fort Wayne sculptor Frank Bougher.
The Aug 23 activities will conclude at 4 p.m.
Contact: Mel Ring 260/356-7471 ; Joan Keefer 260/356-0824
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