AAC
FEATURE
The current Izard County Courthouse was completed in 1940. The Art Deco structure was built to be completely fireproof, as several former courthouse structures had burned, destroying county records.
A Proud Monument Izard County Courthouse built through New Deal efforts to combat effects of Great Depression. Story by Mark Christ s Photos by Holly Hope Arkansas Historic Preservation Program
I
zard County has had an interesting array of county courthouses as the seat of justice moved from town to town in the 19th century, and the current courthouse on the Court Square in Melbourne stands as a proud monument to New Deal efforts to combat the Great Depression. The Arkansas Historic Preservation Program has worked with Izard County since 1995 to keep the 1940 courthouse in service to the people of the county through its County Courthouse Restoration Grant program. Izard County was created on Oct. 27, 1825, and named for Territorial Gov. George Izard. The original county received additions in 1827 and 1828, but the creation of subsequent counties trimmed it to its current size. The first county seat was established at the town of Liberty of the North Fork River near its junction with the White, now the town of Norfork in Baxter County. A sturdy, two-story log dogtrot building was erected in 1829 to serve as the new county’s courthouse. It survives today as the Jacob Wolf House Historic Site operated by the Department of Arkansas Heritage. In 1830 the county seat was moved to Athens, near today’s Calico Rock, and then to Mount Olive in 1836. While it is not known what buildings served as the courthouse in those towns, when the seat of justice moved to its permanent home in Melbourne on May 10, 1875, court was held in a large barn. That 38
humble structure served until a two-story wood-frame courthouse was constructed on the current Court Square in 1878. As often happened, that building and all of the records it held were consumed by fire on April 11, 1889. A new courthouse was built a year later, and then demolished in 1912. The seventh Izard County Courthouse, a handsome Neoclassical brick edifice, was built in 1914 at a cost of $50,000. Its most striking feature was a soaring four-sided clock tower, which a local newspaper humorist claimed showed a different time on each face. That building served until a fire broke out in the storied tower at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 5, 1937. A bucket brigade formed to fight the inferno as other people rushed into the building to remove records and furniture. Having learned a lesson from the 1889 blaze, a pair of fireproof vaults in the 1914 building saved many of the county’s papers. In the aftermath of the fire, county offices were moved into W.H. Powell’s house on the southeast corner of the square and court was held in a nearby Baptist church. Izard County, in the throes of the Great Depression, did not have funds on hand to build a new courthouse, so Judge John W. Hammett contacted the National Youth Administration (NYA), the last of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agencies formed to create jobs for the unemployed, to provide labor for the project. An election was held on Feb. 7, 1938, to float a $30,000 bond issue to buy materials for a new courthouse, which voters approved COUNTY LINES, WINTER 2018
