My Appalachian Life: Morgan County Kentucky Court House Annex--WPA Construction

Monday, November 19, 2018

Morgan County Kentucky Court House Annex--WPA Construction


Morgan County Courthouse Annex Front (East) Photo by Roger D. Hicks

The Morgan County Kentucky Courthouse Annex is for all intents and purposes the actual Morgan County Courthouse since what is known as the courthouse is actually leased to the Appalachian Regional Healthcare System. It holds the offices of the County Judge Executive, the County Clerk, the Sheriff, the Property Valuation Administrator, and meeting rooms for the Fiscal Court composed of the County Judge Executive and the Magistrates. There is also a gymnasium on the ground floor and the basement is leased to a day care program. This building is the most historic building in the county. It was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the heart of the Great Depression and originally served as the local high school. It was dedicated by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Kentucky Governor Happy Chandler. There is a large bronze plaque in the main hallway discussing this historic building and its history. I will add photos of the interior and the information on the plaque in a few days. I shot these exterior photos on Sunday, November 18, 2018, in order to do it at a time when there were not large numbers of cars in the parking lots or heavy passing traffic. The photos are not perfect and I apologize for that. When I can locate better photographs by other people and gain permission to use them, I will add those.

Morgan County Courthouse Annex (Northeast Corner View) Photo by Roger D. Hicks

The building is an excellent example of Depression Era stone work by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which was one of the many New Deal programs instituted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to bring the country out of the Great Depression which had been caused by the economic mismanagement of the Hoover administration. These WPA stone buildings were built all over the southeastern United States where local stone was available of acceptable quality. They are rapidly disappearing and all of them which are still in useful condition need to be restored and saved. Thanks to some interesting circumstances and the high quality of the stone work this wonderful building has survived and remained in productive use almost every day since the day it was opened.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt Photo by Yousuf Karsh

President Roosevelt issued an executive order on May 6, 1935, which established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) at a time when the national unemployment rate was 20%. The WPA was the greatest infrastructure operation in the history of the country. It employed several million previously unemployed people and in the eight years of its existence it built more than 4,000 new school buildings, 130 new hospitals, 9,000 miles of storm drains and sewer lines, 29,000 new bridges, 150 new airfields, paved and repaired more than a quarter million miles of roads and planted 24 million trees. Many of those schools, hospitals, sewer lines, bridges, airports, and roads were in areas which had not had such infrastructure previously and many of them are still in daily operation today in one capacity or another whether or not they are being used for their original purposes. The Morgan County High School, now known as the Morgan County Court House Annex was simply one small project among thousands of others nationwide which the WPA was building at the time. In June of 1943, the WPA was disbanded after national unemployment had dropped to less than 5% as a result of the economic recovery and the effort to build war time armaments. But it will always be one of the most important economic and infrastructure programs in the history of the country.


Photo of Kentucky Governor Albert B. "Happy" Chandler Photo by Murat Shrine

On March 2, 2012, the town of West Liberty, Kentucky, was literally destroyed by a major tornado but the Court House Annex withstood the blast which killed six people in the county and destroyed nearly every other major public building within the city limits. I am adding two photos from the aftermath of the tornado to show just how clearly the town was destroyed around this magnificent building. But the WPA stonework withstood the tornado with some damage to roof and windows which was easily repaired as the effort to rebuild the town began.

Downtown West Liberty After The Tornado Photo by CNN

Gas Station Across Street From Courthouse Annex After Tornado Photo by Flickr

The two photos immediately above were taken by professional photographers in the next few days after the West Liberty Tornado in early March 2012. So far, I have been unable to locate a photo of the Court House Annex taken immediately after the tornado and will continue to search for one and post it when I can. It appears that since the building withstood the tornado with little damage the professionals were looking for "real disaster" photos and did not focus on the Court House Annex But the first photo immediately above of the gas station directly across the street from the Court House Annex shows some of the damage in the immediate area. The sidewalk visible in the foreground of the photo is directly in front of the Court House Annex. The photographer would have been standing in the edge of the small parking lot beside the Court House Annex. The old wood sided Morgan County Board of Education building which stood directly to the south of the Court House Annex was immediately destroyed as was the John F. Kennedy Public Library which stood directly to the north side of the parking lot from which the photograph above was shot. Diagonally across the street to the northeast, the building in which a physical therapy facility was operated and had originally been an automobile dealership was also completely destroyed. Diagonally across the street to the southeast, a Dollar General store was totally destroyed. Without the high quality stonework of the WPA, the Court House Annex would not exist today.

Morgan County Courthouse Annex (North View) Photo By Roger D. Hicks

This historic WPA building still functions perfectly well as the primary site of Morgan County Kentucky government operations and is likely to continue to do so for many years in the future. It deserves to be added to the National Register of Historic Places and I will begin to work in the near future to see if I can facilitate that along with help from as many citizens of Morgan County and the general public as can make a phone call, sign a petition, write a letter, or send an e-mail to the appropriate agencies and people to support the effort. Placement on the National Register would further guarantee for the foreseeable future that this wonderful, iconic, and historic WPA project would be protected, honored, and preserved as it should.