By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
This year marks the 110th anniversary of the construction of the Madison County Courthouse in Wampsville.
On May 21, the Cazenovia Public Library celebrated the building’s long history with a lecture titled “Madison County Courthouse Then and Now.”
During the presentation, Madison County Historian Matthew Urtz discussed the history of the county court; the construction of the original Wampsville courthouse; the 2017-2019 renovation project; and the continued efforts to preserve the building’s historic characteristics.
Early county courts
Madison County was formed in 1806. The first Madison County court session was held in June in a schoolhouse in the town of Sullivan (now Lenox). In October, a second session was held at a schoolhouse in Hamilton.
By 1810, the court had relocated to a formal courthouse on Seminary Street in Cazenovia, where it remained for seven years.
Urtz said the Cazenovia courthouse building burned down in the 1950s.
In 1817, the court became more centrally located when it moved to Morrisville. The original courthouse was torn down in 1849 and the replacement structure burned down in 1864. Madison Hall, the third courthouse on the grounds, was occupied until the end of 1909.
In November 1907, the county voted to move the seat from Morrisville to Wampsville in light of complaints about the location of the courthouse relative to the population distribution.
“Madison County has a weighted voting system,” Urtz said. “Which basically means the population density of a town controls the percentage of votes it gets. When it went to vote, 10 of the 16 towns in Madison County voted against moving the courthouse up to Wampsville. However, it won because the north carried the vote.”
Wampsville courthouse construction
The courthouse on North Court Street in the Village of Wampsville stands on land sold to the county by John Wesley Coe for the price of $1.
The Madison County Building Committee took on the responsibility of developing the courthouse and jail.
Urtz said committee member James Loyster of Cazenovia developed the patent for the jail locks. He was also well known for inventing a machine that made milk caps and another that dispensed movie tickets. His machine shop was located behind the library in the current Boy Scout lodge on Riverside Drive.
Prominent architect James Riely Gordon of New York City designed the courthouse and William J Beardsley of Poughkeepsie designed the jail.
The $250,000 (today around $6.7 million) project began in August 1908 and was completed in January 1909.
As construction reached completion, a few additional expenses were approved, including electric light fixtures, fireproofing and intercommunicating phone lines with Bell Telephone, which allowed for inter-office phone calls only.
The building opened to the public in 1910. Around 3,000 Masons and locals attended the celebration.
A 1969 renovation resulted in the addition of a state-of-the-art county office building next door to the courthouse, allowing the original building to be used as a judicial center only.
Maat (Lady Justice)
“Maat,” according to Urtz, was the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and justice. She is typically depicted blindfolded and holdings scales and a sword.
Over the years, the courthouse has had three different Lady Justice statues atop its dome.
The original zinc Maat statue, installed in 1909, was removed in 1934 and placed in storage.
Several decades later, former County Historian Isabel Bracy led a campaign to have the statue restored. Sculptor Dorothy Riester of Stone Quarry Hill Art Park repaired the statue using modern materials such as fiberglass and epoxy.
The restored Maat was placed in the first floor of the courthouse rotunda.
Maat 2 — crafted by Earl O. Hardendorf using modern materials — was installed on top of the courthouse in 1991. The fiberglass sculpture was repaired in 2008 and removed in 2018.
The current Lady Justice, Maat 3, was placed on top of the courthouse on April 1, 2019. The sculpture is a replica of the original Maat and was created by Charles Wambold, Paul George and Allison Boyd of American Bronze Foundry in Florida.
Two days later, Maat 3 was joined on the roof by the most recent of four eagle sculptures. The original was installed in 1909, the second in 1934 and the third in the 1970s or 80s.
Recent projects and discoveries
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Madison County Bar Association requested donations of paintings of past and current members of the bar.
About 15 of the 40 documented portraits have been returned to the courthouse.
Urtz and the Madison County Clerks Office have partnered with Buffalo State University’s Art Conservation Department to restore the paintings.
In April 2018, a time capsule was discovered in the bottom of the building’s cornerstone. Its waterlogged contents were carefully separated and dried. The capsule included newspapers; Masonic papers and coins; a photograph of the building committee; organizational papers for the bar association; materials from Madison County Historical Society and the Old Ladies Home (Hazel Carpenter Home); miscellaneous documents pertaining to the building’s construction; a county centennial poster; and more.
A new time capsule was placed in June 2018.
2017-2019 renovation
The courthouse underwent an extensive renovation and addition project beginning in October 2017.
The principal goals of the renovation were to enhance the building’s ADA accessibility, efficiency, functionality and security.
“We also wanted to restore some of the architectural features that made the courthouse unique,” said Urtz.
Specific attention was given to the restoration and preservation of the building’s Italian marble flooring, the metal and wooden tulips throughout the rotunda, the stained glass windows and the original handrails. Urtz also highlighted the efforts made to mimic the original woodwork in the creation of the new doorframes.
Although the builder’s notes do not mention the tulips, Urtz suspects that the flowers were intended to represent New York’s historic connection to the Dutch.
During the renovation process, the exterior of the courthouse was cleaned and repaired. Additionally, the clock in the rotunda was repaired and made operational with the addition of a modern time keeping device.
On May 25, residents of Madison County and the surrounding area gathered at the County Office Campus to celebrate the completion of the renovation. The event featured NYS bands, local vendors, food from the Wampsville Fire Department, tours of the courthouse, speeches and a firework display by Zambelli.
