OLD PEPIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE MUSEUM AND JAIL
Welcome to the Old Courthouse Museum. This building was constructed in 1873-74 for $7000, and, with the exception of the five years 1882 to 1886, it served as the Pepin County Courthouse until 1985. It and the jail next door are listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. In 1985, the Pepin County government moved to the current county government center located on 7th Avenue West near the golf course and the Old Pepin County Courthouse became this museum.
This building is now 135 years old and you see in the hallway some of the building's more recent modifications. When built, it had no electricity or plumbing. As these technologies developed, they were added. The paneled walls, suspended ceilings, and fluorescent lights were installed in the 1960s, while this structure was still a working courthouse...a time when more thought was given to what was is in vogue and useful than to what was historical. However, several areas of the building are still close to original and will give you a good idea of what the actual finish may have looked like at the time it was built.
From all directions, the Pepin County Courthouse dominates this one square block of downtown Durand, known as Washington Square. It is a two-story Greek Revival wood-frame building with a giant order open portico. Decoration to the outside includes: the louvered square belfry atop the portico; a lunette window centered in the pediment; simple semicircular fanlight windows above the double front doors and above the back door; and, segmental-arched windows (still visible from the inside in the upstairs courtroom, but now covered on the outside by rectangular frames to accommodate the modern aluminum siding and on the inside by suspended ceilings).
It is the only remaining wood-frame courthouse in Wisconsin and one of only two existing Greek Revival style courthouses in the state. However, extensive interior remodeling, alterations to the windows, and installation of aluminum siding severely diminish this building's character as a true representative of that particular style of construction. Along the southwest wall in the main corridor are pictures showing different stages in the building's life.
This building is historically significant as the long time center of Pepin County government; as a cultural and educational center; as a focal point in the development of the City of Durand; and, as a pivotal element in settling the turbulent thirty year controversy surrounding the location of a county seat. To solidify its hold on the county seat, the Village of Durand, led by its founder Miles Durand Prindle, built this courthouse during the winter of 1873-74 on property owned by Miles and and his wife, Ada, and deeded it to the county.
The southeast wall of the center hall is devoted to the building itself, which is the subject of the numerous drawings, photographs, paintings and three-dimensional works of art displayed. The hall also has a farming display, copies of very old maps of the region, and an exhibit honoring the original inhabitants of the Upper Mississippi River Valley.
A nameplate on each door along the center hall identifies a county office, which may have been located in that room at one time or another. However, which rooms housed which offices originally is anyone's guess.
Room One displays are devoted: to the City of Durand's founder, Miles Durand Prindle; to one of America's greatest female educators, Helen Parkhurst; to the bridges crossing the Chippewa River at Durand; and to a local artist, C. H. Gleason. The museum has eight paintings by Gleason, seven oils and one watercolor. At least two of the paintings are scenes believed to be of the Durand area. The oldest are more than one hundred years old; the most recent was done in 1947. Gleason was born in 1874, the year this building was completed, lived here during the first half of his life and died in 1950 at Mt. Vernon, Washington. He painted throughout his life. Other items of interest include a Eucharist service set for the homebound, Mrs. Ethel Rayburn’s Papal Cross, vintage fire-fighting equipment, a 1901 football helmet, and the still-working Victrola.
Room Two honors Pepin County’s men and women in uniform and the everyday lives of its citizens. Items of interest include: a log cabin doll house modeled on a 19th-century log cabin that stood in the Town of Waterville; a replica of the one-room Maple Ridge School; another C.H. Gleason oil painting; a rare, nearly complete collection of History of the War of the Rebellion ( Civil War); the vintage baby stroller; the Dorwin's Mill 3-dimensional artwork.
Room Three is our household room featuring a 19th-century "Handy Washing Machine", products, tools and appliances used in and around the home, vintage clothing, a hand-pump vacuum, and a parlor stove.
Room Four focuses on health care professions with equipment, furnishings, and other artifacts from a doctor's and a dentist's offices, a former local hospital, a pharmacy, and from a barbershop; also, the "politically incorrect" mile marker for Durand Drug Co. from the early 1900s.
Room Five features artifacts from the former Durand Railroad Depot and old Post Office. Items of interest include the telegraph/Morse Code equipment, old scales, a hand-powered rail drilling tool, a boxcar mover, and a railroad car portable heater. Just outside the door to Room Five is an old hand-crank telephone.
Room Six is the tool room; it and the adjacent hallway include tools used in construction, shoemaking, river rafting, farming, logging, and carpentry.
The building's centerpiece is the Courtroom on the second floor, featuring original walls, windows and woodwork, including the segmental arched windows and the wainscot along the base of the walls all the way around the room. It's as close to the original as you will see.
The jail next door is attached to what was until 1984 the residence of the county Sheriff. The jail is significant for its original iron lattice-work iron cells which are relatively rare in Wisconsin. The jail was still being used until 1984.
Though many significant events occurred in the old courthouse, the most notorious by far occurred in November of 1881. A man accused in the shooting death of a local deputy sheriff the previous July was lynched. As the prisoner was brought down the winding stairs following the preliminary hearing held in the courtroom upstairs, law enforcement officers guarding the accused murderer were overwhelmed and subdued. A hangman's noose appeared seemingly from nowhere and was looped around the prisoner's neck. He was yanked by neck out the door, dragged across the porch, down the steps, over to a tree in the yard and pulled up into the air; still handcuffed and wearing leg irons. It was a chilling November afternoon for the good citizens of Durand, who had to endure for many years after the reputation as a "hangin' town".
A month later, a terrible fire destroyed most of the wood-framed buildings in downtown Durand. The Courthouse was spared.
TMesch – Jan., ‘09