To Build, or Not To Build

To Build, or Not To Build. Decorah: A Walk into the Past. , To Build, or Not to Build , Controversy surrounded the construction of both the 1857 and the 1904 Winneshiek County courthouses. When local residents proposed building the first courthouse in the 1850s, another faction maintained it wasn't necessary to have a special building to conduct county business, preferring instead to continue using a series of rented rooms for this purpose. The courthouse proponents prevailed when in 1857 voters approved spending $18,000 to construct the first 4-room courthouse on land donated by Decorah first citizens, William Painter and William Day. A jail occupied the courthouse basement. A separate jail replaced it in 1876 when voters approved the $12,000 needed to build it. Actual cost of the jail's construction came in under budget at $11,114.25. That structure still stands to the southeast of the present courthouse. , The Voters Speak , By the 1890s, county officials felt a new courthouse was in order as four rooms were no longer adequate for the conduct of county business. Voters decisively turned down the idea in 1898 and county officials, biding their time, made other “temporary” arrangements to address additional space needs. The issue was reintroduced on November 3, 1902, and voters approved $75,000 to build a new courthouse. Officials knew at the time that sum was not sufficient but felt no more than that amount would be approved by the voters. In November of 1903, a second vote called for an additional $50,000 to complete the courthouse already under construction. Angered by what they considered manipulation, voters responded by nearly voting down the additional monies requested which would have left the courthouse standing uncompleted. The vote was 2,139 for and 2,061 against, passing by a slim 78 vote margin. In actuality, only $35,000 of the second appropriation was used to complete the courthouse you see before you. It was occupied for the first time in the fall of 1905. The interior was refurbished in the late 1980s. , Out With the Old, Get Ready for the New , When the 1857 courthouse was torn down to make way for the new courthouse, James Thomas Relf, a local photographer, recorded its demise. His photography studio was on the second floor of the Relf building. Originally built by his father James in 1868 just after the Civil War, the Italianate structure still stands at the north end of Winnebago Street, at 128 West Water Street. Although already retired from commercial photography because of poor health, James T. regularly photographed memorable Decorah events ranging from floods to tornadoes to family times, storing the images on glass plate negatives in his studio. , James was sixty years old when he took the courthouse "deconstruction" photos. At that time he still operated a variety store in the Relf building, so as the courthouse dismantling proceeded, Relf left his place of business at intervals to record the process with his camera. When the deed was done, a group of "first settlers" who had come to Decorah to stay in the early 1850s, was assembled by John DeCow and photographed atop the pile of rubble that had been their first courthouse. Another Decorah photographer, Frank Muller, took this photograph. , Relf died in 1909, just six years after taking the photographs shown here. Most of his glass plate negatives were eventually taken to the dump. However, his set of negatives recording the courthouse dismantling have survived and remain a unique record of a day in the life of Winneshiek County's history.