Past & Present of Norwich - The Old Courthouse

The Past & Present of Norwich

S.S. Randall

The Old Courthouse

Chenango Telegraph, February 18, 1875

Sixty-six years [in 1875] have now nearly elapsed since this venerable structure of the olden time was completed in the early spring of 1809, by its enterprising contractors, Josiah Dickinson and George Saxton, at a cost of five thousand dollars, and thirty-eight years since its demolition or removal, and the erection of a new and elegant successor, at a cost succeeding sixteen thousand.

 

The original edifice laid no particular claims to architectural beauty, from without--though within it appears to have been quite as well adapted to the purposes for which it was designed, as its more pretentious successor.  It was of wood--two stories in height--its proportions unexceptionable and its dimensions square, with an octagonal roof and a graceful though unpretending cupola, surmounted with a weathercock, of some quaint devise.  Its Court room occupied the entire second story, with the exception of two small rooms on the north, devoted to a jury room, and debtors prison.  In the center of the Hall of Justice was a large and commodious circular bar separated by a substantial wooden railing from benches reserved for the jury, on the east and west, the narrow passage, devoted to the Sheriff, Clerk and other officers of the court, and the enclosed slightly elevated platform sacred to the Judges, on the south, and the remaining area on the north,--comprising about an equal space, set apart and separated completely by a strong wooden railing from the residue, for the comfortable accommodation of spectators.  This "gallery" as it was termed, was entered by a door from the passage way, leading to the lower floor, and was reached by a small flight of stairs. Entering this gallery, the spectator found himself at the head of a narrow passage lined on either hand by a series of comfortable benches with high backs, ranged in the form of a square or oblong amphitheater, extending to the confines of the bar, and separated from it only by a narrow alley, in the center of which was the "prisoner's dock."

 

So much for the Court Room and its appearances--Descending the broad circular stairway terminating in the center of the spacious hall below, on your right hand as you advanced to the wide folding doors in front, were the apartments reserved for the Sheriff, or in case that officer did not desire to occupy them personally, his under-sheriff and jailor.  These apartments embraced the entire south wing of the first floor, and were successively occupied within my remembrance by Sheriffs Munroe and Samuel Campbell, and under Sheriff and Jailor Samuel Pike during the sheriffality of Gen. Thompson Mead and Samuel A. Smith.  On the north side of the grand entrance hall were two grim and formidable prison apartments, double locked, and furnished with heavily ironed bars for the two windows by which each was imperfectly lighted and furnished with air.  These two apartments were separated from each otter by the grand circular stairway leading to the rooms above--In these dark, gloomy, forbidding cells, I have seen, through the small, diamond shaped aperture inserted in the upper part of the iron clad door, the most revolting countenances of hardened criminals--notorious offenders of the Harrison and Ganung type,--seldom out of prison--and utterly irreformable under Sheriff Pike during his residence in the Court House had a hard and perilous time of it, in dealing with these depraved, brutal and reckless men--in detecting and defeating their persistent and ingenious plans of escape--and in hunting them down, and recapturing them, when, in spite of his incessant vigilance, they have succeeded in effecting their escape.  No detective or police office, I am confident, ever exceeded him in shrewdness, tact, skill, indomitable courage and cool determination and perseverance.

 

Such were the surroundings and external presentment of the Old Court House.