43
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
YOUNGSTOWN
As the Mahoning County Courthouse marks its centennial, county officials and those who’ve been engaged in its preservation say a proposed major restoration of the deteriorating landmark should be a top priority.
“The situation with the courthouse, if it isn’t attended to, is going to get worse, and then it’ll actually, potentially, accelerate to more extensive deterioration,” warned architect Robert Mastriana of the 4M Co. LLC.
“What we did is merely a temporary fix,” Mastriana said of the removal last fall of the copper rooftop statues and the shoring up of their pedestal.
Mastriana’s firm issued a report early last year to the county commissioners, which recommended $10.1 million in repairs to the courthouse and to the adjacent 1956-vintage county administration building.
“The county knows the urgency of this, and that’s why they’re doing everything in their power to secure funds to save the building,” Mastriana said of the courthouse.
Mastriana made his remarks as the county bar association prepares for a 12:30 p.m. Friday ceremony in the courthouse rotunda to mark the centennial of the building’s March 6, 1911, opening.
At that ceremony, the time capsule that was embedded in the building’s cornerstone at the June 11, 1908, cornerstone-laying ceremony, and retrieved last Wednesday, will be opened; and William Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, will give a presentation on the courthouse’s history.
“It’s incredibly important. This is such a historical landmark, and it’s one of the most beautiful courthouses in the state,” Judge Maureen A. Sweeney, administrative judge of the county common pleas court, said of the importance of the building’s restoration.
“The problem is going to be trying to find funding to do it,” Judge Sweeney said.
Calling the building “the hub of justice in Mahoning County,” John A. McNally IV, chairman of the commissioners, said he wants the restoration to start this year.
“Exterior decay leads to interior decay, and we’re not going to let that happen here at our courthouse,” McNally said. He added the county will seek federal, state and historic preservation foundation money to help with the restoration.
To date, the commissioners have borrowed $9,354,896 in three loans toward the courthouse restoration and will owe $5,473,348 in interest on that money over the 20- and 25-year lives of the loans, according to county auditor’s office records.
Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti proposes to launch a committee to coordinate private fundraising for the project.
“You cannot find a more beautiful building than we have right here, and we have to try to keep it and restore it. And I think the people in the Valley would also be a part of helping us with that,” Righetti said.
Built to serve a steel-mill community with a fast-growing population, the current courthouse at 120 Market St. is the third in the county’s history.
The first, built in 1848 in Canfield, still stands as an office and commercial building.
The second courthouse at Wick Avenue and Wood Street, which opened in 1876 after the county seat moved to Youngstown from Canfield, was demolished in 1922.
“It’s a huge priority,” to restore the county courthouse, said Phyllis Beard of Boardman, a restoration artist, who restored, and in some cases re-created, the building’s murals during the late 1980s.
“This is probably Youngstown’s premier treasure as far as architecture.”
Most notable among those murals are four 17-foot-high pendentive (triangular) murals beneath the dome, which were painted by Edwin H. Blashfield and installed when the building opened.
Blashfield’s 1936 New York Times obituary referred to him as the “dean of American muralists.”
“I have a real passion to see stewardship of the Youngstown area taking care of this amazing treasure. ...The work just doesn’t get done like this anymore,” Beard said.
Mastriana outlined several essential tasks to be performed as part of the restoration:
The statue pedestal atop the building must be dismantled to replace corroded carbon-steel pedestal roof-support beams.
The beams that support the main courthouse roof must be reinforced at their ends, where moisture seeping through exterior walls has corroded and weakened them.
With its carbon-steel anchoring pins having rusted away, the terra cotta rooftop railing must be replaced. Terra cotta is a clay-fired product with a glaze on it.
The corroded carbon-steel anchoring pins for the rooftop cornice overhang must be replaced with stainless steel.
“All of that is in a precarious position, and potentially, it could fall,” Mastriana said of the railing.
The courthouse is home to common pleas court, the auditor’s, treasurer’s, recorder’s and clerk of court’s offices, microfilm department and law library, and to the prosecutor’s victim-witness assistance office.