Forsyth County Courthouse Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The Forsyth County Courthouse is a three-story limestone-sheathed building located in downtown Winston-Salem, the county seat of Forsyth County. Completed in 1926 and expanded on the north and south facades in 1959-1960, it is the third courthouse to stand on the site, the courthouse square, since the county's creation in 1849. Northup & O'Brien, a prominent Winston-Salem architectural firm known for its public buildings, designed the 1926 courthouse-the only one that the firm ever designed. Their successor firm, Lashmit, James, Brown and Pollock designed the 1959-1960 additions. Since the colonial period, North Carolina's counties have served as the base of political power and law; the county courthouse, therefore, is the single most significant governmental building in each of the state's one hundred counties. The Forsyth County Courthouse meets National Register Criterion A for its association with the important functions of county administration as the local seat of government and center of law. Besides the usual court functions, including courtrooms, judge's chambers, and records storage, the courthouse also contained offices for a few county government agencies. The building retains a good deal of integrity despite minor interior alterations in 1974 to create additional county government offices. The period of significance extends from the completion of the courthouse in 1926 to 1963 reflecting the long period of its role in local government and law. The building's associations during the past fifty years is not of exceptional significance.