Michigan’s Narrative
in Stone

by Jean B. Eggemeyer
July 16, 2010

“It all started with a new digital camera and full tank of gas,” jokes John Fedynsky about his years-long quest to research and document all of Michigan’s county circuit courthouses.

While on break from law school in the summer of 2003, Fedynsky, now an assistant attorney general, took a sightseeing trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. There he discovered that many of the state’s picturesque small-town courthouses were linked through the major thoroughfares.

It was after the trip, while reviewing his series of photos of the striking courthouses that he had taken with his new camera, that he decided to combine several of his passions — travel, photography, law, writing and Michigan history — and write a book about the buildings, their history and the lore that surrounds them.

Between the bar exam and his first job as a research attorney with the Michigan Court of Appeals, Fedynsky completed a good portion of his research in the U.P. and northern part of the “mitten,” visiting two courthouses each day when possible. Thereafter, he visited other counties when he was able during time off from work.

His dedication to the project has resulted in the book just published by The University of Michigan Press: Michigan’s County Courthouses: An Encyclopedic Tour of Michigan Courthouses.

The book is a factual, concise and easily digestible rundown of architectural details and siting histories of the courthouses, as well as the Michigan Supreme Court building, dedicating two to three pages to each building. Ranging in age from more than 140-years-old (Keweenaw County’s classical, white, clapboard structure built in 1866) to less than a year old (Ottawa County’s courthouse in Grand Haven), the architectural style of Michigan’s county courthouses is distinctly diverse.

Author and photographer John Fedynsky.
Courtesy of Adrian Kwitkowsky.

Some of Fedynsky’s favorites include Midland County’s courthouse, designed in the Tudor style and featuring unique ground-glass murals; the Jacksonian era courthouses in Lapeer and Berrien counties with their Greek Revival style; and the modern, user-friendly Kent County structure in Grand Rapids with its expansive windows and prime views of the city.

Marquette County’s courthouse also holds a special place in his memory for its unique notoriety as the setting for the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder, based on Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker’s (aka Robert Traver’s) book of the same name.

“It was featured almost as a character in the movie…When it was filmed there in 1959 it was just a sensation as it moved Hollywood to the U.P.,” says Fedynsky.

Right Site?
Excerpt from Michigan’s County Courthouses, published by The University of Michigan Press:

Any lawyer worth his or her salt will tell you that larceny is a crime against someone’s personal property, not real property. But many an inhabitant of nearby Iron River will contend that Iron County’s magnificent courthouse in Crystal Falls was stolen. The resentment runs deep for some, who reportedly continue to mutter and shake their fists at the site of the old building at the top of Superior Street.

The state Legislature set off Iron County from Marquette and Menominee counties in 1885 and named it after the ample iron deposits located in its territory…Lansing designated Iron River, a small mining and lumber town in the western part of the new county, the temporary county seat. Meanwhile, Crystal Falls in the eastern part of the county was about as old and as large in population and wanted the county seat designation, too.

A clever plot was hatched. After a County Board of Supervisors meeting in Iron River, a contingent from Crystal Falls proposed a high-stakes poker game. The Iron Riverites quickly accepted, and news spread through town. People gathered at the Old Boyington Hotel and watched in delight as the boys from Crystal Falls had a bad night of gambling. The diversion was set.

Two members of the Crystal Falls delegation feigned fatigue and excused themselves upstairs to go to bed. Instead, they sneaked out the back through a window into waist-deep snow and temperatures that dipped to twelve degrees below zero. The streets were deserted. One of them left propped open the back door of the shack that then was the courthouse. They gathered the county record books, packed them in a hand sled, and made off for the railroad yards. There they bribed a conductor, who happened to be from Crystal Falls, to stow the records in a freight car. They waited an anxious hour before the train left, worrying that at any moment an angry crowd would seek them out…

For a while, Iron River threatened armed invasion. Cooler heads prevailed, and efforts turned to a public referendum in the spring of 1889. But the fight was by no means clean. Loggers and miners from surrounding areas reportedly voted in the election, along with many deceased persons. Other irregularities call the validity of the ballot into question.

In the end, Crystal Falls won the election by a scant 1,142 to 1,051. This “measly” margin “gave us the legal right to have the county courthouse,” said one of the original conspirators. He added, “To rub things in a bit, we built the best in the Upper Peninsula.”

And several buildings hide surprises within their interiors, says the author. The Tuscola County Courthouse in Caro includes a striking 12-by-18-foot stained glass window depicting General Louis Cass meeting with Native Americans on the banks of a river. Genesee County’s simple, neoclassical structure built in the 1920s houses impressive murals depicting representational figures of law, local industries and landscapes.

Michigan’s County Courthouses also provides an often entertaining glimpse into the character of Michigan’s people, particularly its early non-Native American settlers, through well-chosen anecdotes.

In fact, the emphasis on the “house” portion of the word “courthouse” is what most surprised and pleased Fedynsky, a self-described “city boy,” while working on the project.

“In many ways the courthouse was the public house and had all kinds of things going on there, official and unofficial,” he explains. “I found some neat stories…in Antrim County people would drop their house plants off in the courthouse atrium and leave them there over the winter. At other courthouses people would gather for town hall meetings, county fairs and weddings. It was interesting to me to find out that these were very ‘homey’ places.”

“This is a book about inanimate buildings, but really it’s the story of the people who conceived of these courthouses, built them and maintained them,” Fedynsky adds.

Where possible, Fedynsky wove in vignettes about notable trials, political battles of the day, county seat skirmishes and other historical anecdotes.

“What impressed me was the extent to which the buildings truly stand as symbols representing the best wishes and aspirations of the communities for law, order, truth, justice and the American way, and all that good stuff.

“Within and outside the courthouse walls there is a continuing narrative of Michigan’s people; the buildings tell the story of each corner of Michigan.”

Jean B. Eggemeyer owns communications and marketing firm Carillon Communications LLC, serving the business and non-profit communities.