The Owen County Courthouse

The grand limestone building at the heart of Spencer is a courthouse Owen County built after it was organized in eighteen nineteen. This one, raised between nineteen ten and nineteen eleven, is something else entirely. A Neoclassical temple of local stone designed by Jesse Johnson of Indianapolis, it was a grand investment for a rural county at the time.

Look up at the flat roof and you will find a copper dome crowned with a four sided Seth Thomas clock. It has anchored this courthouse square ever since. After a hailstorm battered the copper dome in recent years, the county restored it, keeping the old landmark gleaming over Spencer.