-
(HABS)
Overlooking the town is the handsome Greek Revival gable-front courthouse. Its construction was prompted by the 1839 designation of the Howard District of Anne Arundel County. It was built of ashlar granite by contractor and stonemason Timanus, who honed his design skills through a previous collaboration with noted Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long Jr. on the Patapsco Female Institute of 1837 (now a preserved ruin at 3655 Church Road). Samuel Harris, “architect and measurer of buildings,” was hired in June 1842 to oversee the final phases of construction. The courthouse is distinguished by its boldly expressed stone details and domed octagonal lantern, indicative of its civic function.
The courthouse received a substantial addition encompassing a preexisting house constructed for transplanted Baltimore attorney Edwin P. Hayden. A second addition reoriented the courthouse, happily maintaining the original front. Both additions are sensitive to the older building, erected of granite and incorporating the distinctive pediment motif.
Across from the courthouse is Lawyers’ Row, a grouping of small frame, late-nineteenth-century gable-front buildings erected as offices for local attorneys. The oldest and most intact is the Henry Wootton Law Office (c. 1869; 8351 Court).
Howard County Jail (1851; 1 Emory Street), like the adjacent courthouse, was also built of local granite by Charles Timanus Jr. to meet the demands placed on Ellicott City as the newly designated county seat. It was significantly enlarged by the current Gothic Revival- and Italianate-influenced main building (1878) designed by Scottish-born civil engineer John Laing. It features a central gabled pavilion and is surmounted by a lantern similar to that of the courthouse.