page_title: Pike County Courthouse (Illinois)
section_title: Previous courthouses
hierarchical_section_title: Pike County Courthouse (Illinois) / Previous courthouses
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of the original Pike County Courthouse, built in 1821.
context_page_description: The Pike County Courthouse is a government building in Pittsfield, the county seat of Pike County, Illinois, United States. Completed in 1895, it is the fifth courthouse in the county's history.
context_section_description: The first Pike County Courthouse was completed in mid-1821; it was a log building, 16 by 18 feet (4.9 m × 5.5 m), and the county paid $32 to Daniel Shinn for the project.  Despite this expense, officials soon sought to leave; a commission chose Atlas to be the permanent county seat in early 1823, although the official move was delayed until 1824 by a lawsuit.  A new courthouse was built at Atlas by year's end, although the courts had been meeting there since the previous year.  This being a temporary log building, county officials soon outgrew it, and a better structure was ordered in 1826 at a cost of nearly $1,500.  However, the commissioners' plans were too grand; this building was never constructed, and county offices began operating out of rented quarters.  The commissioners' second attempt at a courthouse was more successful; it was ordered in early 1829, and by September the county had paid approximately $1,800 for its new building, 36 by 24 feet (11.0 m × 7.3 m) and two stories tall.
  Despite the expense of this building, county residents living far from Atlas sought to have the seat relocated, and in 1833 it was moved to a new location to be named "Pittsfield".  The first courthouse there was a wooden building ordered in 1833 and erected near the public square, but as early as 1836 county officials ordered yet another new building.  When it was completed in 1839, the county had spent $15,000 building one of the region's grandest courthouses, and the old courthouse was relegated to commercial purposes.
caption: Original courthouse
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