Licking County Courthouse - West Courtroom
A Cleveland architect, H.E. Meyer, designed our fourth courthouse in 1876, after our 1832 Greek Revival structure burned down in 1875. He laid out a Second Empire style on the exterior, then popular, echoing the transformation of Paris between 1850 and 1870 into the city we know today of broad boulevards and striking public buildings like the Paris Opera. Inside, though, his touch was light.
Our west courtroom for some twenty-five years was similar to the courtrooms on the first floor, steel framing for flat ceilings with pressed tin panels. By 1903, there was growing interest in having a more finished main courtroom, but county finances were tight. Needed repairs on the ceilings of the second floor, however, opened up the possibility of some aesthetic refinement, and Nov. 9, 1903 the county commissioners's journal records "It was further decided by said committee to change 6 panels in ceiling of Court room from steel to plastering."
They also contracted with a local firm, "Pratt & Montgomery to furnish wood finishings in Court room as per specifications for $623.25." This was the beginning of what would become the West Courtroom as we know it. It becomes clear from later payments that the commissioners on or after Nov. 9 selected W.J. Harper & Son as lead contractor for the "Court room" project, but I did not find that stated directly in the journals.
By Mar. 14, 1904, though, "In the matter of remodeling the Court room /
In view of the fact that the Building fund is now overdrawn, be it therefore resolved that no new contract be entered into to complete Court Room repairs, and no outstanding contracts to commence, unless in the judgment of the Commissioners such work is necessary to protect work already done, until funds are available for such work." All three commissioners vote "Yea."
However, since October 1903, they had been purchasing piecemeal, on a square foot basis, round stained glass medallions from Kyle Art Glass of Springfield, Ohio. By July of 1904 they have installed four, and the plastered, coffered ceiling is done, but the vast expanses of walls and ceiling are largely empty.
In the Commissioners's journal for June 26, 1905 [pg. 82] "On motion a contract was awarded August Roeder [of Toledo] to construct Floor in Court Room as per specifications. Contract price — $472.00" [There are a number of other items of county business, then…]
"On motion a contract was awarded Bryant Brothers of Columbus Ohio to Decorate Court room as per plans and specifications attached to contract / work to be done in [all?/full?] contract price — $1910.00"
That amount would be about $68,000 in 2025 dollars.
The next line in the journal says: "On motion a contract was awarded August Roeder for items following work in Court room as per Plans and specifications… [then follows some detail under three headings as to wood work, marble, and something electrical] — total $765.00."
Calling Bryant Brothers of Columbus, Ohio was a significant step towards the West Courtroom we see today. A "History of Ohio" written some twenty years later reports on "the Bryant Brothers Company, decorators in fresco, an organization of the highest artistic merits and one whose clientele and patronage are by no means consigned to Columbus. The Bryants have done some of the finest mural and other interior decorative work in the Middle West."
This 1925 account continues: "After finishing his schooling W.C. Bryant took up the business of interior decorator and has devoted forty years of his life to that occupation. His partner is Charles L. Bryant, and they established a business at Canton, Ohio but for the past ten years their headquarters have been in Columbus. They have executed commissions for interior decoration in many of the states of the Union."
I found this section of great interest: "Few people know that the very popular indirect lighting system originated with the Bryant Brothers, letters patent having been issued to W.C. Bryant for important elements in the art of reflected lighting. This line has been so expanded and developed that the American Reflex Lighting Company with W.C. Bryant as president has recently been incorporated, and the business has become a distinctive one with many branches in other cities."
One point I had hoped to clear up in these researches was how the decision was made to place the oculus, echoing Rome's Pantheon, in the center of the West Courtroom ceiling. I am still puzzled how no specific reference to this made it into the commissioners's journals. But it seems likely that this was an option presented and put into place by the Bryant Brothers, for whom electrical work and indirect illumination was already a part of their business at a time when many contractors had barely begun to work with this then-new technology.
More crucially for our overall understanding of the room's art, the historical entry concludes: "The Bryants have had many years of expert experience in interior decoration work. Their artistic taste combined with their ability to direct and organize a corps of artists efficient have enabled them to broaden their business to one of national importance. Their most extensive work has been designers of interiors for many of the noted cathedrals and larger churches. They have been fortunate in combining artistic talent with financial resources to develop such an extensive business and to it they have given their best endeavors."
What the Bryant Brothers did was assemble the artisans, and supervise the final decoration of a space, whether a cathedral in Cleveland or a courtroom in Newark. They did not do the detail work: they had "a corps of artists" on which they could draw, which extended not just over Ohio, or even across the United States, but likely around the world.
There are at least three artisans whose work graces the West Courtroom, almost certainly four, beyond the Kyle Art Glass installed before Bryant Brothers were brought on board. First, for the murals on the ceiling: Adèle Bassi is a Swiss artist, buried with her parents Ansemle and Rosine Boni in a dramatically designed monument with her uncle, Rinaldo Rossi, who helped engineer the Simplon Tunnel, whose opening is recreated in massive scale as a frame for their shared resting place in Switzerland.
Records for her are few and unclear, but one account says she "studied and worked in Italy for most of her adult life, where she appears to have earned a livelihood selling to the tourist trade highly skilled copies of Old Master paintings then on view in the major Italian city galleries and museums. Recently, a signed work by Bassi bearing the inscription "Picture Gallery, Mme. Bassi, Peinture / Angiolo (Carlo) Dolci, Uffizi Gallery, Florence" was offered at auction, providing some indication of the nature of her artistic work when in Florence and Italy more generally." Also on another Bassi painting reverse is the inscription: "Picture Gallery, Mme. A. Bassi, Peinter, 15 Borgognissanti 15, Florence" and "Angiolo (Carlo Dolci), Uffizi Gallery, Florence." She may have had a studio in New York for a time, or possibly just an agent for her commissions there, while she lived a substantial portion of her life in Florence. Circumstances of the implied Mr. Bassi are unknown, as is the year of her death, which was at some point after 1910.
On the south wall, two panels also applied as murals painted elsewhere, are signed and clearly the work of John Franklin Douthitt, an artist born in Illinois but whose professional career is unambiguously based in New York City, on Fifth Avenue, for the years between 1880 and 1908. A painter and tapestry maker, he ran a school of art in Manhattan, and was much in demand as an interior decorator himself. Born in 1856, on his death in 1945 he is buried in the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County up the Hudson River from New York.
Our third signed artist of this space is Ludwig Bang. Like Douthitt, Bang is a temptation to digression because we almost know too much about him: born in northeastern Germany on the Baltic coast in 1857, he came to America after studies in Munich and Paris to visit the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago during 1893, and moved shortly afterwards to Toledo, where he developed a diverse clientele in a variety of painting circumstances, from theatre curtain scenes to murals in restaurants and book illustrations. With the growth of anti-German sentiment before World War I, he returned home in 1914 to become a noted muralist and history painter in his native land. He would die in 1944 as war raged around him, and is buried in a place of honor in Bad Doberan, his birthplace.
Unsigned, but clearly by his hand, are the portrait medallions painted directly onto the plaster walls of the West Courtroom; these start with the martyred presidents of that era, Lincoln to the left of the bench as the jury, trial participants, and audience would see it, and McKinley to the right. It was the placement of McKinley in parallel with Lincoln that began this project, looking in records after 1901, since before that date it would be highly unusual for anyone, even in Ohio, to put McKinley on a par with Lincoln. It is that theme of assassinated leaders that probably led to the misidentification of the president behind the jury, Grant, as Garfield, though both are deceased by the time Bang painted these three and the state seal onto the walls in 1905. On Nov. 7, 1905 the Newark American Tribune prints an article about the beauty of the West Courtroom as being comparable to a fine museum on the East Coast, or even in Europe, and states "the work should be completed within the next two weeks." The anonymous reporter describes the portraits of Lincoln & McKinley flanking the bench, and misidentifies Grant as Garfield on the north wall. So I take this contemporary account as being of interest, but with caution: they say the figures overhead in the Bassi ceiling murals are Music & Art in the northwest corner, Commerce in the northeast, Science in the southeast, and Industry in the southwest.
Nearing the end of the work, the Commissioners's journal of Jan. 2, 1906 [pg. 159] has a line "Bryant Bros. / 2 East wall panels — $200." These are clearly Ludwig Bang's two angel paintings. The procedural mind will recall that the commission to the Bryants was "to Decorate Court room as per plans and specifications attached to contract / work to be done in [all?/full?] contract price" but anyone who has worked with a project such as these know there's always a few late additions that go over the budget, and these are carefully negotiated.
What we don't know is how or if the Bryants made proposals for two more bas reliefs, or additional panels, and were told "don't even ask." The work has been clearly somewhat "unfinished" for 120 years; even aspects of the Bassi & Douthitt murals may be presented "as is" and not in an entirely completed form. We will likely never know if the two paintings signed by Bang behind the bench were specifically imagined for that location, or if they were what he had which would fit; I obviously like the idea of the former, and have written at length on the details within each painting telling something about both Bang's journey to that point, and where the country was at, with evocations of Winslow Homer and the Louvre's Winged Victory out of Greece creating layers of storytelling in a small space.
But it was time to conclude. The courtroom was being put into use with the new year, 1906, thirty years after the building itself had been built. One last time to the Commissioners's journal, for Feb. 5, 1906, and a mundane entry along with many to provide for work on roads, bridges, and culverts around Licking County. The county commissioners approve a cleaning contract for the "new part of Court House" which will include the Jury Room & entry area for janitorial services, with the following cautionary note: "I hereby certify that funds are now in process of collection or are already in County Treasury and cannot be appropriated for another purpose. J.N. Wright, Auditor." What funds there were left no room for additional finery, and it would have to be enough for about another 120 years.
I mentioned a fourth artisan in the West Courtroom, whose name I had hoped to confirm: the sculptor of the busts high above the room, somewhat alternating with the art glass roundels, Clay and Webster above the bench. We don't have a definitive answer to this question, but a possible one can be found if you go back down to the first floor, and turn aside a mat in front of the rotunda desk.
There, in the black and white tiles, speckled with ancient fossils if you look closely at them, is a central tile which has skillfully inset these words: "P.C. Reniers Pittsburg PA" — the craftsman who cut and laid this ornamental flooring. He arrived in Pittsburg (as it was spelled then) in 1851 and had an active business there until his death in 1894. In his obituary material, it is said quite emphatically that he was a skilled sculptor, particularly in demand for marble busts, which were in many homes and public places around the city, and that there were many left in his workshop on his passing.
Is it possible, even before the decorating project for the West Courtroom began in earnest ten years later, the busts we see today were by the hand of Peter Reiniers? He could have sold them as he did the first floor work years before, and they might have been on display around the courthouse in years between, or they could have been purchased from his estate. Lacking a carved signature, we will not know.
So many hands, brought together from around the county: Pratt & Montgomery, W.J. Harper and Son; other Ohioans like Kyle Art Glass in Springfield, August Roeder's workshop out of Toledo, the Bryant Brothers of Canton and Columbus . . . then the wider range of Ludwig Bang, John F. Douthitt, and Adèle Bassi, evoking Germany and Paris and Florence, plus P.C. Reniers of Pittsburg . . . all to bring us a room where justice can rule, surrounded not just by artistic beauty, but with object civic lessons, some of them obvious, and others which challenge us to ask more and deeper questions about how we got here, today.
