The Franklin County Courthouse in Ottawa is the oldest surviving courthouse designed by George P. Washburn, who had previously worked for the Kansas City firm of Cross and Taylor supervising construction of Union railroad depots in places including Denver, Atchison, Peoria, Illinois, and the old Kansas City depot in the West Bottoms, and who also served as architect for the Kansas State Board of Charities. The courthouse block was deeded to Franklin County by the Ottawa Town Company in 1864 after the town secured designation as county seat, but it sat vacant for decades while county offices occupied rented properties along Main Street and residents worried that frequent fires in wood-frame downtown buildings might destroy public records. After earlier courthouse efforts failed, including a proposal to trade Main Street frontage for construction on the Hickory Street half of the block, local legislator P.P. Elder introduced a bill in the Kansas House of Representatives allowing Ottawa to create a mill levy to fund construction, and the courthouse was built with a three-mill levy over three years. Its bell and clock towers are distinctive features shared with many of Washburn's other courthouses, and the allegorical statue of Justice at the crown of the west gable signifies the presence of the county courts, which have since moved to newer quarters within the courthouse square. Although it predated this building, Franklin County's most famous trial involved George Maddox, charged in 1866 with participating in Quantrill's 1863 raid on Lawrence; he was acquitted and fled on horseback to Missouri after the trial. On Independence Day 1892, the cornerstone was laid with solemn Masonic ritual, and Washburn appears in the scene wearing Masonic regalia. The courthouse also housed a large third-floor meeting room for the Grand Army of the Republic, whose political and social influence was strong in nineteenth-century Ottawa, and in 1911 a cedar tree was dedicated there to George H. Thomas Post #18 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox; after the organization became inactive in the 1930s, its collections passed to the Franklin County Historical Society. Before the current Courts Building was erected north of the courthouse, a Washburn-designed jail and sheriff's office stood there. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, the courthouse remains the headquarters of Franklin County government and is noted for varied Romanesque Revival carvings in white sandstone trim, including butterflies, anchors, fruits, sprites, sunflowers, and human portraits; its second-floor courtroom was also used to film the 1989 television movie Cross of Fire.