Jackson County Courthouse: Iowa's Oldest

The red brick building that houses Bellevue Elementary School is older than Iowa itself. It was completed in eighteen forty-five, one year before Iowa achieved statehood, making it one of the oldest surviving public buildings in the state, and today the oldest functioning school building in Iowa.

When the Wisconsin Territory organized Jackson, Jones, and Linn counties in eighteen thirty-seven, Bellevue was designated the seat of justice for all three. The courthouse was built by the firm of Dohaney and Jones in the Greek Revival style, a two-story brick structure at the corner of South Third Street that was meant to signal permanence and civic ambition on a frontier that had precious little of either. Third Street in Bellevue, perched above the Mississippi River bluffs, was then about as far west as organized American government went.

The building's history is more complicated than its sturdy brick walls suggest. The county seat shifted to the town of Andrew in eighteen forty-eight, then bounced back to Bellevue in eighteen fifty-one when local politics resolved in Bellevue's favor. During the years it served as an active courthouse, the building also housed a Masonic lodge and one of the town's first newspapers, the Bellevue Courier. Active courthouse use ended in eighteen sixty-one.

What happened next is unusual in American preservation history. Rather than being demolished or left to decay, the building was absorbed into the local school system. Children have been educated within its walls for generations, and the Greek Revival columns and thick brick walls that were built to inspire legal authority have served instead to shelter arithmetic lessons, spelling bees, and the routine miracles of public education.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen eighty-one. It is older than most of its Iowa counterparts, preceded only by the Lee County Courthouse of eighteen forty-one and the Van Buren County Courthouse of eighteen forty-three. Those buildings no longer serve their original civic functions. This one educates children every school day.