Georgetown County Courthouse

Front: This courthouse, designed by prominent architect and South Carolina native Robert Mills (1781-1855), was built in 1823-24 to replace a courthouse which had been damaged by two hurricanes. Mills himself, who also designed the Washington Monument, called this courthouse "a great ornament to the town." A modern Mills scholar has described it as "the most sophisticated of his South Carolina courthouses." Reverse: An initial appropriation of $12,000 was approved for the new courthouse. The South Carolina Board of Commissioners for Public Buildings, including John Keith and Abraham Cohen of Georgetown, supervised its construction by contractor Russell Warren. This Mills design is an excellent example of the Classical Revival style so widely used in American public architecture during much of the nineteenth century.