Jackson County Courthouse: Sylva's Hilltop Symbol
North Carolina
At the top of a steep hill at the end of Main Street in Sylva, a Classical Revival courthouse looks out over the entire town. To reach its front door you climb one hundred seven steps from the plaza below. The building was completed in nineteen thirteen, when Sylva wrested the county seat designation from the older town of Webster.
A local industrialist named C.J. Harris offered thirty thousand dollars to build it, and the county voted to move.
The design copied the Madison County Courthouse in nearby Marshall. It served as the courthouse until nineteen ninety-four, then reopened in two thousand eleven as the Jackson County Public Library. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains the most visible landmark in western Jackson County.
