Boone County Courthouse
Since Columbia became the official judicial seat of Boone County in the early decades of the 1800s, three courthouses have stood in the square between Walnut and Eighth streets.
The current Boone County Courthouse is home to the 13th Judicial Court of Missouri. The courthouse was commissioned in 1906 and completed in 1909 with a budget of around $100,000, completed by contractor J.A. McCarter. The square where the courthouse is located houses several historic and artistic monuments including a World War I memorial, which has the names of the 45 Boone County residents who lost their lives in the war, and First Born, a bronze statue that celebrates the importance of family in the community.
Although in the early days of Columbia’s court system judges and juries met outdoors in pleasant weather and in private residences in winter, in the mid-1820s a permanent courthouse was commissioned. However, only 20 years after the building’s completion, the structure was in such poor condition that it was deemed unusable.
By 1846 the court had appropriated a total of $15,000 for a new courthouse. Little is known about the architect responsible for the project, but the Department of Community Development at the University of Missouri Extension says it is believed to have been W.M. Winter, who earlier in his career had submitted a proposal for Academic Hall on the university’s campus that had been rejected. The building, which faced south toward the MU campus, was positioned so that the columns of the courthouse perfectly aligned with the now iconic columns of Academic Hall.
In 1909, as the current courthouse neared completion, it was decided that the 1846 courthouse would be razed. However, community members petitioned for the columns to be preserved. Today the columns of the second courthouse and the still-standing columns of Academic Hall, which burned down in 1892, remain, connecting the city to the university from Walnut Street to the center of Francis Quadrangle.
