$90K grant to help fund historic courthouse’s foundation repairs

Also, Lyndon received a historic grant for repairs to its library.

Without the grant, it would have been difficult for Anderson County to make the improvements, Dudley Feuerborn, county commission chairman, said.

“This is going to help us preserve our grand old building,” Feuerborn said. “... We’re very, very excited we got the grant.

“We’re working under a very tight budget.”

The courthouse, which is one of Ottawa architect George Washburn’s later designs, has a stone and mortar foundation and had been experiencing problems with water infiltrating into the basement for several years, he said.

During last summer’s flooding and heavy rains, one section of the concrete basement floor buckled and a stairway was tilted, he said.

The flooding damage was repaired, but it showed the need to stabilize the foundation, he said.

Using the grant, the county will have repairs done to the foundation and a drainage system installed around the footings.

The grant, which was announced this week, comes at a time when the county also is building a new jail and law enforcement center in the courthouse square east of the courthouse.

The timing will allow contractors to work on the foundation at a time when excavation is already under way, he said.

“The projects can be coordinated and we don’t have to tear up the grass or dig up the ground twice,” Feuerborn said.

The construction on the law enforcement center cleared up a mystery of where the the courthouse’s roof gutters drained, he said.

Excavators found the end of the drain buried in the ground, he said. The drainage will be rerouted into Garnett’s storm sewer system as part of the courthouse improvement project, he said.

There had been some concern that the work on the law enforcement center might be a problem for getting the grant but that didn’t appear to be the case, he said.

“We’re very happy,” he said. “I know our county clerk Phyllis Gettler and our grantwriters put in a lot of work on this.”

The Anderson County Courthouse was completed in 1902.

The courthouse, National Register of Historic Places, is an example of what’s called Romanesque architecture. The courthouse has round turrets on each corner and a central tower.

The commission would like to do a complete rehabilitation of the courthouse, Feuerborn said.

“Like what you’re doing to the Franklin County Courthouse,” he said.

That includes reroofing the central tower and shoring up a flagpole at the top of the tower, he said.

The building also needs a new heating and air-conditioning system, he said.

“But we haven’t even begun to budget for that,” he said.

Once the foundation is completed and waterproofed, the basement will be used for storage, he said.

The grant to Anderson County was the only one to a still-active county courthouse this year, Teresa Jenkins, Kansas State Historical Society public information officer, said.

Twenty-two projects will receive slightly more than $1.2 million in grants this year, she said.

Also in the area, Lyndon will receive slightly more than $61,000 for repairs to the roof and gutter system of the city’s Carnegie Library.