o First courthouse, 1855-1883: A modest two-story affair, something befitting a rural outpost of the Old West.
o Second courthouse, 1883-1890: A much larger Victorian structure, capped by a cornice. It burned to the ground in 1890, six months after a massive fire gutted downtown Vancouver. Several prisoners had to be rescued during the blaze, and the county lost valuable court and probate records.
o Third courthouse, 1892-1942: Built of red brick and Tenino stone, the courthouse was a three-story building designed by Seattle architect W.A. Ritchie.
o Fourth Courthouse, 1942-present: The third courthouse was torn down to make room for a six-story, 78,062 square-foot structure built of reinforced concrete. The price tag: $546,000.
o First courthouse, 1855-1883: A modest two-story affair, something befitting a rural outpost of the Old West.
o Second courthouse, 1883-1890: A much larger Victorian structure, capped by a cornice. It burned to the ground in 1890, six months after a massive fire gutted downtown Vancouver. Several prisoners had to be rescued during the blaze, and the county lost valuable court and probate records.
o Third courthouse, 1892-1942: Built of red brick and Tenino stone, the courthouse was a three-story building designed by Seattle architect W.A. Ritchie.
o Fourth Courthouse, 1942-present: The third courthouse was torn down to make room for a six-story, 78,062 square-foot structure built of reinforced concrete. The price tag: $546,000.
For more than 70 years, the Clark County Courthouse has stood as a looming monolith to law and order. Its solid presence, unyielding to the passage of time, will continue to stand in perpetuity under federal protection.
The building was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places, a major honor for a historic structure. The designation means the building is architecturally and historically significant and worthy of long-term preservation.
Jacqui Kamp, a historic preservation specialist with the county’s community planning department, said that while the building’s role housing all facets of county government had changed over the years, its importance had never wavered.
She wrote and submitted an application for the building’s inclusion to the register last year. It was approved and added to the list in April, despite many changes to the building over the years.
The building once housed county government offices, jail cells and courtrooms, but starting in the 1980s, it transitioned toward being solely a center of law and justice.
“Courthouses are going to change over time, especially those built in the 1940s that were used for all county business,” Kamp said. “We have to modify them to meet modern needs.”
And modern needs require modern changes — for good or bad, depending on one’s perspective.
One person who isn’t a fan of the decades’ worth of changes at the courthouse is Salli Hilborn, the daughter of Day W. Hilborn, the building’s architect.
“It used to be a very beautiful building before they painted it brown and got rid of the original stuff,” she said.
While Salli Hilborn said she was “delighted” the building was placed on the register — where it joins the Kiggins Theatre, another Hilborn design — she said a lot of damage had already been done to the building’s historic value.
While much of the terrazzo-style floors have been left intact, along with the art moderne chandelier and bronze fixtures, other important design elements have been lost to the sands of time. The most noticeable loss came when the building’s original bas-relief sculpture above the front entrance was damaged in 1978 when the courthouse’s façade was power washed — a mistake Salli Hilborn called foolish.
“(The statue) got damaged enough that they had to take it down,” Kamp said. “So there was this sort of grass-roots effort to replace it. They said the building looked pretty naked without it.”
Citizens pooled their money and paid for a replacement, which was affixed above the doors in 1990. Although the design of the sculpture is the same, the new one is made out of metal. Salli Hilborn owns chunks of the original.
At the top of the building’s interior, other features signify how the building has changed over the decades. An area that once sequestered some of the most dangerous criminals at the jail is now a storage room for the janitorial staff. And in one of the oldest courtrooms on the top floor, the original skylight was covered over.
The addition to the register means it will be harder, if not impossible, to perform large-scale renovations to the courthouse without at the same time maintaining the building’s historic character and ties to the past.
The building was dedicated on Nov. 29, 1941, just eight days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. And while Hilborn’s name might not be a household one, his fingerprints are nonetheless all over Clark County. To name just a few, the original Spic-N-Span (now a Muchas Gracias, at 1411 Washington St.), the Vancouver Savings and Loan building (now Chase, at 1205 Broadway) and The Columbian’s building (701 W. 8th St.) were all designed by Hilborn, who died in 1971.
Originally, the Public Works Administration was expected to foot the bill for the courthouse’s construction through a grant. But when the New Deal program cut back spending in the 1940s, the county was told it was on the hook for the costs. County taxpayers ponied up much of the $546,000 it cost to build the courthouse.
Brad Richardson, the museum experience coordinator for the Clark County Historical Museum, called the building a direct link to the community’s architectural past.
Any standing building by Hilborn is a treasure, he said. “This is a tie to our architectural heritage of a really great architect who designed some great buildings,” Richardson said.
