Chapter 18

Chapter 18
pages 80 - 84

PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

     At first, court was held, as heretofore stated, in a small log house, about fourteen by sixteen feet square; but this soon became so crowded that an upper room over a store on Water street was procured, and used while the court-house was being built. The brick for the present court-house was made in 1833, by Samuel S. Hackleton. At the January .term, 1834, the county commissioners' court passed an order that sealed proposals be made to the clerk of said court, by the next term, for the building of a court-house. At said term of said court, the proposals of Charles W. McClallen for the mason work, and those of George B. Macey for the carpenter's and joiner's work, were accepted. That building, which is still used as a court-house, is said to have cost $15,000. If that is so, the people understood then as now how to pick the public goose. Labor was so low then, compared to what it is now, that it ought not to have cost more than half that sum. The court-house has several times been changed since, to suit the whim of those who were temporarily in power. The bench, the bar, the jury-box, spectators' seats, and stairs, have all been several times changed. The stairs formerly were inside the building.
     In early times we had no jail. It has often been put in print that the cellar under the old court-house was the jail. There was a sort of cellar under it, said to have been made to store fur-skins in. I never saw it used as a jail, nor was it at all fit for such a use,— a dog could have scratched out of it; but about the year 1834, a jail was built of square logs, on the alley between Main and Hamilton and between Monroe and Perry streets. It was sixteen feet square, and fourteen feet high. The lower story was constructed of three thicknesses of logs —two lying horizontally, and one between them standing perpendicularly, so that, should an attempt be made to bore the logs out, the perpendicular ones would come down, and stop the hole. The upper story was of only one thickness of logs. To give the work strength, these logs were dove-tailed at the corners. Above the strong room there was a strong floor, and a trap-door. Through this trap-door prisoners were passed, and then the ladder drawn up. The floor of the lower part was made by square timbers fitted close together, and the whole covered with oaken plank spiked down. This building is said to have cost $1000. Such timber as composed it, all but the roof, stairs, floors and doors, could then be bought, delivered on the ground, for eight cents per foot, running measure, and men to put it together for from a dollar to a dollar and a half a day. From this the reader can determine whether that pen ought to have cost a thousand dollars.
     This jail proving to be altogether too small, and very inconvenient, another jail was built in 1849, partly of stone and partly of brick, at the intersection of Washington and North-Fayette streets. That building used as a jail until recently, although exceedingly inconvenient on account of its distance from the court-house. Every body saw this, but there were two difficulties in the way of amending it. This building cost $11,000, and then for the public to be taxed for another seemed extravagant; but then the county commissioners, who owned the whole town plat, had sold all the ground about the public square for little more than nominal prices, and now to buy back one of those lots, for ten or twenty times as much as they had received for it, was more than they thought their popularity would stand. But the necessity became greater, and people became less inclined to watch their constituents, and finally, in 1867, the board of supervisors, the successors to the board of county commissioners, bought a piece of ground for $6000 that the commissioners had sold for about $75, and on that lot they have, at the expense of about $75,000, erected much the finest jail I ever saw, and they have it now in use for the incarceration of prisoners.
     A question may be asked, how we secured prisoners before we had a jail. I answer, we some times set a guard over them, some times let them go on bail, even when it was doubtful whether the case was bailable, and some times we sent them to neighboring counties for security. As the legislature was constantly forming new counties, and it required some time to put up public buildings, an act was passed requiring prisoners to be sent to some other county for confinement, when there was no sufficient jail in the county in which they were charged with criminal conduct.
     In old times there was literally no clerk's office in Peoria county. Isaac Waters, who was clerk of both courts when I came here, lived in a cabin made of small unhewn logs, daubed with common mud, not half large enough to accommodate his family; and yet he had no other place to keep the few books and papers belonging to said courts. These he some times could not find, and was blamed when he perhaps deserved more to be pitied. After the present court-house was completed, which was in 1836, the clerks and the sheriff were accommodated with rooms in the first story. Originally the first story of the court-house was divided into six rooms, three of which were used for public offices, and the others were rented to the lawyers. This building was not fire-proof, and in process of time some became afraid our records might be burnt, and advocated pulling down the old house, and building one that should be much finer and also be fire-proof. Those who pay no taxes are always in favor of any new expenditure, because they pay none of it, and have a chance to get some money as it circulates; and in this way the most careful and the most reckless of the town's people became combined in favor of an expenditure of something like $100,000, but were in part overpowered by the farmers in the board, and in part by a fear of their constituents, and a compromise was made. They agreed to put up one wing of the great temple of justice first, for the protection of the records. The result of this compromise was our present clerks' offices, which cost about $19,000. They are fire-proof, and are so constructed as to compose a part of the great edifice, according to the original plan, when, at some future time, the plan shall be carried out. I suppose at that time every one expected that before now the whole edifice would have been completed; but the enormous debts we have contracted for railroads, water works, and the jail, make it now very uncertain when it will be done.

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