Floyd County Courthouse: PWA Moderne on the Prairie

The Floyd County Courthouse in Charles City is the third courthouse on this site, and it bears the unmistakable imprint of New Deal-era public architecture. The current building was designed by the firm of Hansen and Waggoner and completed in nineteen forty in the PWA Moderne style, a streamlined variation on Art Deco favored by the Public Works Administration during the Depression, characterized by clean horizontal lines, minimal ornament, and a sense of civic seriousness. Two earlier courthouses stood here: the first, a Greek Revival building from the eighteen fifties, burned in eighteen eighty-one.

Floyd County is named for Sergeant Charles Floyd, the only member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to die during the journey. He died of what is believed to have been a ruptured appendix near present-day Sioux City in August of eighteen oh four.