The crown jewel of Monroe’s Square looks a bit different these days as the scaffolding surrounding the Historic Green County Courthouse grows ever higher. My last column reviewed some history of the building related to notable features and earlier renovations. Today we’re digging in a bit deeper.

Two major projects were started this year. Everyone who sees the scaffolding assumes the building is being tuck-pointed, which is the process of removing and replacing the mortar between the bricks. But the two projects actually fall under the main categories of roofing and sprinkler system. The sprinkler system installation is proceeding as planned, but the roofing project is where things took a turn.

Back in the 1980’s, the Green County Board chose 25-year fiberglass shingles for the roof. If you do the math, you’ll realize those shingles have more than outlived their life.  

This time the roof will be slate. Quarried from the ground, durable slate has protected European castles and cathedrals for centuries. Slate will cover the main roof and the towers of the three turrets. The clock tower will be covered in coated copper.  

Former Courthouse maintenance supervisor Gene Grinnell and current supervisor Dick Marty can attest to the many challenges of maintaining a 130-year-old building. The building’s status on the National Register of Historic Places also comes with various stipulations related to preservation standards. Overall, the goal for the renovation was to not only protect and preserve the building, but also to return it as much as possible to the historic, authentic state as built in 1891.

Original to the building are the water troughs (gutters), cornices (decorative molding) and finials (decorative vertical elements, in this case the ones that look like miniature round towers on the four corners right above the clock). In some cases, these elements are held in place by nothing more than caulk and layers of paint. Therefore, in addition to the slate roof, the bid included the following: finials and metal cornices to be removed and duplicated from coated copper, and gutters and downspouts to be replaced.  

Some tuckpointing was also planned for the masonry at the top of the building — specifically the area between the roof and down to the band of light-colored limestone that runs around the entire building. Because of the building’s age, it was anticipated that some wood (where it meets the masonry) would need to be replaced. 

A structure built today would have a framework of wood or metal, but the Historic Green County Courthouse has a skeleton of brick. During the building process, masons laid the brick and stone, leaving spaces for the windows to be added later. The red “facing” brick you see on the outside of the building is the same red brick that forms interior walls that are nearly two feet thick. On top of it all is a roof sheeted with wood and covered with those old fiberglass shingles.  

If you were re-roofing your own house, you’d be able to climb up a ladder to see how things looked before you got started. But when the bottom edge of your roof is nearly fifty feet off the ground, you need scaffolding or a crane. Both have come into play with this renovation project. As the scaffolding went up, workers got a better look at the condition of the building, and what they found wasn’t good.

In my final column of this three-part series, I’ll tell you how engineers, carpenters, masons, roofers, painters and sheet metal workers will work together to restore the Historic Green County Courthouse so it is ready to stand for another hundred-plus years.   

— Noreen Rueckert is director for Green County Tourism and Green County Cheese Days, and helps out with Main Street Monroe’s Concerts on the Square.  Her favorite cheese is rumored to be Feta. She has the best office in the county — overlooking Monroe’s Square from the tower of the Historic Green County Courthouse. She dabbles in photography and graphic design, adores cats and iced coffee, and secretly loves the Cheese Days Song.