Duval County Courthouse
| Duval County Courthouse | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| General information | |
| Location | 501 W Adams St Jacksonville, Florida |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 30°19′48″N 81°39′48″W / 30.33008°N 81.66336°WCoordinates: 30°19′48″N 81°39′48″W / 30.33008°N 81.66336°W |
| Completed | 2012 |
| Client | Duval County, Florida |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | KBJ Architects |
The Duval County Courthouse is the local courthouse for Duval County, Florida. It houses courtrooms and judges from the Duval County and Fourth Judicial Circuit Courts. The new facility is located Downtown Jacksonville, Florida; it was built starting in 2009 and opened in 2012.
Duval County was created on August 12, 1822 and was formerly part of St. Johns County. Although the county's area was huge, it took more than twenty years before the first courthouse was constructed during the 1840s. A second courthouse was constructed in 1886, but was burned in the Great Fire of 1901. The third courthouse was constructed in 1902 and closed in 1958. A new courthouse funded by the Better Jacksonville Plan was planned in 2000, but budget issues and rising costs delayed its construction until 2009.
The first courthouse erected in Duval County was constructed of wood during the 1840s where Forsyth and Market Street intersect. It was burned to the ground during the Civil War.
It took another twenty years before it was replaced with a brick building, constructed in 1886, which lasted until the Great Fire of 1901, which destroyed most of downtown Jacksonville. After the fire, the courthouse was one of the first buildings reconstructed, across the street from the old one. The exterior brick walls of the old courthouse remained mostly intact and were utilized in the creation of a new armory building. That structure became part of the Lanier Building, which was demolished in 2003.
Rutledge Holmes designed the 1902 courthouse, which had a stone exterior. The architect incorporated up to seven additional floors in the design, but the original building was never expanded. Instead, when additional space was required, an annex was added in 1914, nearly doubling the usable courthouse space.
An architecturally modern courthouse was constructed on East Bay Street and dedicated in 1958, ten years before consolidation and at a time when the entire county's population was just over 450,000. During that same time, Jacksonville built the Haydon Burns Library, Friendship Fountain, Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum, the current Courthouse Annex and the CSX Transportation Building, making the city, “thoroughly modern”. The 1902 courthouse was demolished; the 1914 annex was preserved and later expanded to include the site of the 1902 courthouse and still functions as a county office building.
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