Courthouse Square Historic District
Roughly bounded by Van Buren, Haynes, Maple, and 10th Sts., Centerville, IAThe Courthouse Square Historic District in Centerville, IA is locally significant under Criterion A as it illustrates the importance of county seat designation to the commercial development of a community, and under Criterion C as it represents a cross-section of popular commercial architectural design. The period of significance is from 1876 (the construction date of the oldest extant building) to c.1947 (the 50-year requirement). This district meets the integrity requirements established in the Multiple Property Documentation Form for commercial and public buildings as well as a historic district.
There does not appear to have been any opposition to locating the seat of county justice on this site in 1846. (In many counties there was at least one other town in direct competition for the honor.) Surveyor J.F. Stratton obviously planned that the Public Square would be the focal point of the community when he laid it out with such vast proportions. From the beginning, the county courthouse was located in this area, first along the south side of the Square, and in the 1860s in the center of the green space.
The location of the first permanent courthouse in the center of the Public Square coincided with the end of the Civil War. These two events ushered in a period of true commercial development around the Square. As the citizens of Appanoose County came to Centerville to transact their legal business at the courthouse, they would take advantage of the variety and number of stores providing goods and services around the Square. There were a number of small towns in the county which served the area farmers and coal miners. These included Cincinnati, Moravia, Moulton, Mystic, and Rathbun. While these small communities offered general stores, groceries, schools, churches, and lodge halls, they could not offer the variety of goods commonly found in a larger town. Thus, the businesses around Centerville Square profited from visitors to the courthouse.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.