21 July 2006

Cullman County’s First Courthouse on Display at Wallace State

Dwayne Creel puts the finishing touches on the display case he built for Jack I. Roberts’ model of the first Cullman County courthouse.

A local band performs in the model of Cullman’s first courthouse.

Model of Cullman County’s first courthouse (1879-1912) in the James E. Folsom Reading Room on the sixth floor of the library at Wallace State Community College.

HANCEVILLE, AL-- A model of the first courthouse of Cullman County has been placed on permanent loan to the Family & Regional History Program of Wallace State College in Hanceville and is on display on the sixth floor of the college’s library. Although Jack I. Roberts only lived in Cullman from 1964 to 1966, he made the G scale model as a gift to the county. It was originally presented on October 6, 1984, through the efforts of Bob Bates of The Cullman Times.

   The first Cullman County courthouse stood on the corner of Fourth Street and Second Avenue West, on the site of the present day Cullman Savings Bank and the All Steak Restaurant. Built in 1879, it was such a strikingly beautiful building that it was photographed many times. The court house narrowly escaped serious damage from a fire in 1894. An arsonist or arsonists did only minor damage to the building at midnight on Sunday January 14, 1912 but a second attempt at 11:30 PM a week later burned the building beyond salvage. Few, if any, county records were lost. The fire did not spread as there was no wind that night and the court house square, a lot donated by C. C. Scheuing, was otherwise vacant except for a well and a fire station. The second court house would occupy the same ground until it was demolished in 1965.

   The model of the court house sat in the basement of the current (third) court house for most of the last twenty years. Now at Wallace, it has been cleaned and repaired by Dean Stringer, Martha Morgan, and Robert Davis. Dwayne Creel has built a special glass case to protect the model. Proportional figurines have been added for scale: a lawyer advising his chicken stealing client to not appear in court holding the evidence and a band performing for an appreciative test audience. Around the James E. Folsom Reading Room, on the sixth floor of the library, can also be seen photographs of old Cullman and paintings of street scenes in the 1880s as envisioned by Wallace artist in residence Bill Sharpton. “The overall effect of the model, paintings, and photographs creates the illusion of being on a street in Cullman around 1880 to 1900,” said Robert Davis, chair of the Family and Regional History Program at Wallace State.

   The Wallace State genealogy library is open to the public, Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 8:15 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, contact Davis at 256/352-8265 or robert.davis@wallacestate.edu.

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  Kristen Holmes
  Director, Communications and Marketing
  Wallace State Community College
  P.O. Box 2000
  Hanceville, AL 35077
  256/352-8118
  E-mail: Kristen.Holmes@WallaceState.edu