A Greek Revival landmark of 1839 crowned by a green cast iron dome, this was for decades the tallest structure in Missouri and a working seat of justice. Inside its courtrooms more than three hundred enslaved people filed suit for their freedom, among them Dred and Harriet Scott, whose case reached the United States Supreme Court. Decades of decay and a multi year, roughly twenty seven million dollar restoration ended in May 2025, when the building reopened with its first elevator, accessible ramps, and modern galleries on slavery, suffrage, and Black life in the city. Admission is free, generally nine to five daily. The west steps align dead on with the monument across the lawn, a deliberate civic axis worth pausing over.
Stand at the west doors a minute, with your back to the Arch. This is the Old Courthouse, and those doors you're facing line up dead straight with the steel out there, the law and the monument looking at each other across the green. The building went up starting in eighteen thirty-nine, Greek Revival, all columns and symmetry, and that great cast-iron dome overhead came along later, green and copper-toned, riding high above the columns. For most of the twentieth century this place sat quiet. Then it closed up in twenty-twenty, and crews went through it top to bottom. It reopened in May of twenty-twenty-five after a renovation of about twenty-seven and a half million dollars, the final piece of the larger CityArchRiver project. They gave it its first elevator ever, and ramps, so for the first time in its life anybody can roll right in. Free, every day, nine to five. Inside now are whole galleries on the people who made this courthouse matter — the freedom suits fought here, Virginia Minor and the fight for the vote, African American life in this city. Go in if you've got the time, it's worth it. But before you do, stay out here with me a moment, because the ground under these steps carries more weight than the dome does.
Photo: Daderot · CC BY-SA 3.0
