Johnson County Courthouse (Iowa)
courthouse in Iowa, United States
The Johnson County Courthouse in Iowa City, Iowa, the county seat of Johnson County, United States, was completed in 1901; it was the second courthouse to stand at this location. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
History
Johnson County's first courthouse was a two-story frame structure built in 1838 in Napoleon. After the county seat was moved to Iowa City a 56-by-28-foot (17.1 by 8.5 m), two-story brick courthouse, was completed in 1842. A jail was built at the same time. The first courthouse built on the present courthouse square was built about 1856, but the records are unclear as to its specifications. In 1875 a suggestion was made that the courthouse should be donated to the University of Iowa, and the city and county would build a joint facility. The measure was to be put to the voters, but it never appeared on a ballot. By 1897 cracks were detected on the south wall, endangering the structure and the records it housed. Construction on the present courthouse began in 1899.
The public source identifies “Johnson County Courthouse (Iowa)” as courthouse in Iowa, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Johnson, County and Courthouse.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6268249. Authority coordinates are 41.656, -91.535. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1975, 1838 and 1842.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johnson County Courthouse (Iowa)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.