The Court House

Architect James Renwick, who designed the Smithsonian Castle, also designed the Fredericksburg Court House, built in 1852, the only Gothic Revival court house in Virginia. Its cupola contains a bell from the Revere Foundry in Boston, presented to the town in 1828 by Silas Wood, who had married Fredericksburg native Julia Anne Chew Brock and called it an exchange of a bell for a belle. During the Civil War, the cupola served as an observation point in the battles of December 13, 1862, and May 3, 1863. After the war, the occupying Union army used the building in administering the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, and former slaves brought cases there to be heard. The building also housed the town's fire-fighting equipment until the early twentieth century and remained in active use as a court until 2014.

Fredericksburg, Virginia · United States