St Louis Old Courthouse DSC01056--bnw
by Greg Kluempers
Title
St Louis Old Courthouse DSC01056--bnw
Artist
Greg Kluempers
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
St Louis Old Courthouse Old Courthouse
The Old St. Louis County Courthouse was built as a combination federal and state courthouse in St. Louis, Missouri. Missouri's tallest habitable building from 1864 to 1894, it is now part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and operated by the National Park Service for historical exhibits and events.
Land for the courthouse was donated in 1816 by Judge John Baptiste Charles Lucas and St. Louis founder Renuguste Chouteau Lucas and Chouteau required the land be "used forever as the site on which the courthouse of the County of St. Louis should be erected. The Federal style courthouse was completed in 1828.
It was designed by the firm of Lavielle and Morton, which also designed the early buildings at Jefferson Barracks as well as the Old Cathedral. The firm is reported to the first architect firm west of the Mississippi River above New Orleans. Joseph Laveille as street commissioner in 1823-26 was the one who devised the city's street name grid, with ordinal numbers for north-south streets and arboral names for the east-west streets.
In 1846 the slave Dred Scott sued for his and his wife's freedom as they had been held illegally as slaves in free states. All of the trials, including a Missouri Supreme Court hearing, were held in Old Courthouse. The case was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled against the Scotts, saying they did not have grounds as citizens to sue.
Uploaded
November 30th, 2016
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