GeorgiaThe Clarke County Courthouse that fronts downtown Athens with its tall flight of stone steps and columned portico was completed around 1914 in a Classical Revival idiom by Atlanta architect A. Ten Eyck Brown, replacing an 1876 courthouse on the site; a five-story addition was grafted onto its north side between 1986 and 1989. The building anchors the Downtown Athens Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 10, 1978. County justice long extended beyond the courtroom itself: the earlier Old Clarke County Jail, built in 1876 to a design by Col. Leon Henry Charbonnier, still contains its original hanging trap door from the era when Georgia counties carried out executions by hanging. That jail, separately listed on the National Register in 1980, is a rare surviving reminder that nineteenth-century capital punishment was a local, county-run affair conducted at the jail rather than in the courthouse.
Clarke County Courthouse
The stone-and-brick heart of every Georgia county.
Clarke County Courthouse is a courthouse in Athens, Clarke County. It is one of 47 historic sites cataloged in Clarke County on Georgia Roam.
The site sits at 33.9601, -83.3746 near Athens. The nearest cataloged historic site is Church-Waddel-Brumby House (historic place), about 0.1 miles away. Others within a short drive include Parrott Insurance Building, United States Post Office and Court House, and Franklin House.
This record is drawn from the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.
The Clarke County Courthouse that fronts downtown Athens with its tall flight of stone steps and columned portico was completed around 1914 in a Classical Revival idiom by Atlanta architect A. Ten Eyck Brown, replacing an 1876 courthouse on the site; a five-story addition was grafted onto its north side between 1986 and 1989. The building anchors the Downtown Athens Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 10, 1978. County justice long extended beyond the courtroom itself: the earlier Old Clarke County Jail, built in 1876 to a design by Col. Leon Henry Charbonnier, still contains its original hanging trap door from the era when Georgia counties carried out executions by hanging. That jail, separately listed on the National Register in 1980, is a rare surviving reminder that nineteenth-century capital punishment was a local, county-run affair conducted at the jail rather than in the courthouse.
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