Chatham County Courthouse
The Chatham County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located at Pittsboro, Chatham County, North Carolina. It sits at the center of town in the middle of a traffic circle. It was built in 1881 for $10,666 and is a two-story rectangular brick structure in the Late Victorian style. It features a two-story classical portico crowned with a distinctive three-stage cupola. A one-story addition was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. In 1959, extensive renovations were performed on the building.[2]
Chatham County Courthouse | |
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| Location | NC 15-501 and Highway 64, Pittsboro, North Carolina |
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| Coordinates | 35°43′13″N 79°10′38″W |
| Built | 1881 |
| Architectural style | Late Victorian |
| MPS | North Carolina County Courthouses TR |
| NRHP reference No. | 79001691[1] |
| Added to NRHP | May 10, 1979 |
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.[1] It is located in the Pittsboro Historic District.
A fire on March 24, 2010, did great damage to the building which was in the midst of another renovation.[3][4] The restored building reopened April 20, 2013 with an exhibit covering Chatham County history on the first floor and a courtroom on the second.[5]
In 1907, the county gave a license to the United Daughters of the Confederacy to place a statue of a Confederate soldier outside the courthouse. In 2019, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners voted to rescind this license, and the statue was removed as part of the trend toward removal of Confederate monuments and memorials in the 2010s.[6][7]
References
- "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- Mary Ann Lee and Joe Mobley (n.d.). "Courthouses in North Carolina: Chatham County Courthouse" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places - Nomination and Inventory. North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Retrieved 2014-08-01.
- Anne Blythe (2010-03-24). "Historic Chatham County courthouse burns". Raleigh News & Observer. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
- "Exterior walls of Chatham County courthouse may be salvageable". Chatham Journal Weekly. 2010-03-26. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
- Goodtree, Hal (2013-04-21). "Historic Chatham County Courthouse Restored". Cary Citizen. Retrieved 2013-04-23.
- Confederate monument at center of protests in Chatham County taken down
- Taylor, Derrick Bryson (20 November 2019). "Confederate Statue in North Carolina Comes Down After 112 Years (Published 2019)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2022-10-13.
