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Huerfano County Courthouse and Jail

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1904, C. A. Henderson. 401 Main St. (U.S. 160) (NR)
  • Courthouse (Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)
  • Jail (Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

C. A. Henderson, an architect from Pueblo, designed the county courthouse, which still dominates Walsenburg's downtown, reflecting in its rich detail and shiny silvery roof the county's more opulent days. The exterior of the symmetrical, two-story building is rough-faced local sandstone that rises to a central, four-story bell tower bristling with pedimented dormers, a roof-top finial, and minarets. Large stone blocks are used for both the skin and the surrounds of the arched second-story and round tower windows, the open entry porch, and the retaining walls around the courthouse square. Similarly Romanesque Revival in inclination is the adjacent jail (1896), of the same stone and with the same dominant square tower. The steel cells and steel beds are still in the jail, which in 1994 became the Walsenburg Mining Museum, digging into the past of “The City Built on Coal.”

Writing Credits

Author: 
Thomas J. Noel
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Data

What's Nearby

Gray Cottage
Visitors' Center (Colorado & Southern Depot)
Post Office
Medical Office (Community House)
St. Mary's Catholic Church

Citation

Thomas J. Noel, "Huerfano County Courthouse and Jail", [Walsenburg, Colorado], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/CO-01-HF01.

Print Source

Buildings of Colorado, Thomas J. Noel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 371-371.

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