Saline County Courthouse, Benton

The Saline County Courthouse in Benton is the oldest building in the city's commercial historic district. Architect Charles L. Thompson designed it in an unusual choice for Arkansas: Romanesque Revival, with a four-story clock tower at one corner, three smaller towers at the other corners, rounded arch entrances, and dentillated cornices in red brick.

Construction began in nineteen oh one after bauxite was discovered nearby in eighteen eighty-seven, bringing new prosperity and outgrowing the previous courthouse. The cornerstone was laid by a local physician and master of the Benton Masonic Lodge. The building cost thirty-one thousand dollars and was finished in early nineteen oh three.

The county renovated it in nineteen thirty-nine and placed it on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-six. Benton's bauxite boom made Arkansas a center of aluminum ore production, and this courthouse was built on that wealth.