In 1833, the state legislature created Leake County and made Carthage its county seat. The Moderne courthouse is a carefully articulated three-story building with a cast-stone base below an interwoven grid of cream-colored and brown brick and cast-stone elements, the most prominent being fluted pilasters. The rectangular building’s principal entrances are located in its narrow ends and feature ear-of-corn motifs in the friezes, with bas-relief panels depicting blind justice above the doors.
In a strikingly austere merging of Moderne and Colonial Revival, the nearby limestone and yellowtan brick U.S. Post Office (1939; 201 N. Pearl Street) by Louis A. Simon’s Office of the Supervising Architect features a wooden cupola and aluminum grille above the entrance. Inside, a handsome blond-mahogany woodcarving, Lumbermen Rolling a Log (1941) by New York City sculptor Peter Dalton, depicts two black men working as loggers.
At 101 E. Franklin, the former Coca-Cola bottling plant (c. 1940) displays trademark cast-stone Coca-Cola bottles and “Coca-Cola” in script.