Madison County Courthouse (Kentucky)

The Madison County Courthouse is a historic courthouse in Richmond, Kentucky, United States, which serves as the seat of government for Madison County. It is a Greek Revival structure originally built in 1849–1850 by John McMurtry according to the designs of Thomas Lewinski, the two of whom were some of the most prominent architects in central Kentucky during the nineteenth century. It has been expanded and remodeled several times since, most recently in 1965. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Background

Madison County, named ultimately for the fourth President of the United States, James Madison, was created by the state of Virginia in 1785, and formed one of the nine original counties of Kentucky when the state was admitted to the Federal union in 1792. Richmond became the county seat in 1798, replacing Milford, four miles to the southwest, and was named for Richmond, Virginia, which was the birthplace of John Miller, the veteran of the American Revolution who founded the city. The first formal county courthouse, erected in 1798, consisted of a log cabin with an adjacent jail; before then, county services operated out of Miller's own barn. The following year, the log cabin was replaced by a plain, two-story brick building designed by Tyra Rhodes, which served for the following fifty years.

Tyra Rhodes' nephew William Rhodes was one of the commissioners charged with procuring plans for construction of a new courthouse in the late 1840s. He sought to retain a reputable architect and hired Major Thomas Lewinski, an English immigrant who had received some formal training as an architect and made a name for himself as a proponent of the Greek Revival style in nearby Lexington.