Summers County Courthouse

After Summers County was formed in 1871, it first used a Baptist church two miles north of the New River as its courthouse, then moved court functions to the second floor of Cameron Lewis Thompson's printing shop in Avis until it burned in 1875, and afterward to the attic of John H. Pack's storehouse opposite Hinton Island. In 1873, architect Frank Pierce Milburn designed a two-story courthouse with a hipped roof, four octahedral towers, six offices, a courtroom, and jury rooms, but disputes arose over whether it should stand at Foss or Avis until the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway offered three acres for public use if the courthouse were placed in Hinton. The building was then erected at its present Ballengee Street site, where commissioners hired Colonel John C. McDonald of Fayetteville, WV, in 1875 to construct it for $10,500 using brick burned from on-site clay and timbers and lumber from Hinton Island. It was completed in 1876 except for the four octahedral towers, and the total cost reached $14,000; the towers and a slate roof were not added until 1898 because of funding shortages. As the county grew, a 1925 addition designed by Charleston architect R.L. Whitten doubled the courthouse's size with a hall, five rooms on each floor, a slate roof, and two large octahedral towers at the corners, and a final 1940 addition between the courthouse and the Memorial Building provided vaults for county records and office space for state-county bureaus with a flat roof and no towers. In 2012, the County Commission began historic restoration work to repair, protect, and preserve the courthouse's architecture, including replacing turret roofs, cornice trim, and finials, removing red exterior paint during masonry restoration, and planning window restoration, electrical, data and phone upgrades, and courtroom remodeling while maintaining the building's historic features; the Summers County Courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hinton, West Virginia · United States