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Property Location
Property Features
When completed in 1942, the Outagamie County Courthouse stood as a powerful symbol of modernity. LeVee and Allen designed the edifice in an idiom blending Art Deco, Moderne, and stripped-down Beaux-Arts influences that has come to be called PWA Moderne, named for the Public Works Administration, the New Deal agency that built many public buildings in this style during the Great Depression. The courthouse is an austere blocky composition of Indiana limestone, with bold planar massing that steps back from the entry portal and up from the main block of the three-story facade. Windows are grouped in tall vertical bands, linked by aluminum spandrels, ornamented with a scalloped pattern. An elaborate aluminum grille ascends nearly the full height of the portal above the entry doors. Aluminum was then a recently introduced building material, whose use signaled modernity.
Aluminum also ornaments the domed lobby, but frescoes on the lobby walls lend the space a sense of warmth. Francis Scott Bradford, an Appleton native and nationally prominent muralist, depicted themes of settlement, labor, and family, each accompanied by Bible verses. Also in the lobby stands a bust of Joseph McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who chaired the notorious hearings on alleged Communist infiltration of the U.S. government in the early 1950s. In 1939, McCarthy launched his political career as a circuit judge in Appleton and had an office here until 1946.
A large three-story modern addition has been attached to the rear of the courthouse. This property is locally significant under Criterion C as a well-preserved Art Deco/Moderne transitional style courthouse of powerful design. This is one of the finer Art Deco style public buildings in Wisconsin and contains a handsome and intact lobby area.
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
Architecture & History Inventory
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319-319A-321-323 N APPLETON ST
39434
Located in Appleton, Outagamie County
