215 1st Avenue South
Long Prairie, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Todd County Courthouse, Sheriff's House and Jail

Statement of Significance:

The Todd County courthouse was built in 1883 to house the governmental needs of a quickly growing central Minnesota county. The courthouse site, on a hill overlooking the city of Long Prairie, has been used for governmental purposes since the first county building was erected on the site in 1870. The courthouse is significant architecturally as a good example of an Italianate public building. The courthouse, supported in its role by several ancillary buildings which share the site, has served the needs of the county for over a century.

Following the organization of Todd County in 1867, county business was conducted in the homes of the officers until February 1870, when the citizens of Long Prairie donated a small frame building to the county. This building was located on the hill and was placed next to the liberty pole, a flagpole so named because it had been erected by the twenty-seven inhabitants of the county in 1860 who had chosen to gather at the spot to celebrate Independence Day.

The present courthouse is the third at the site, replacing a two-story frame building which had replaced the donated building in 1873. The 1883 courthouse is a brick structure, designed in the Italianate style popular at the time. Architects for the building were P. J. Pauley and Brothers, Architects, of St. Louis, Missouri, and Charles H. Sparks. The exact contribution of each remains unknown. Three years later Pauley designed another Italianate courthouse for Starke County, in Dickinson, North Dakota

Modifications undertaken ca. 1900, apparently consisting of the conversion of the spaces at the rear of the building from a sheriff's residence into offices were the work of Fremont D. Orff, who designed several Minnesota courthouses and is probably responsible for the design of the jail south and west of the Todd County courthouse. The enclosed front entry, built in 1938, was a public work relief project sponsored by the Works Progress Administration.