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Overview

Elijah E. Myers (1832-1909) became a prolific designer of governmental buildings during the Post-Civil War era, a period marked by the rapid expansion of the US economy and, concurrently, the Federal Government's regulation and oversight of it. Larger and more active governments at all levels were generating vast numbers of paper documents, records that needed to be maintained and safeguarded in new, capacious, and fireproof public buildings. This was where Myers made his name. Following his success building a fireproof and grand capitol in Lansing, MI, he competed for and won commissions for courthouses and other public buildings across the Midwest. His reputation grew, as did the number of courthouses he did for local governments. By some accounts, he designed over 100 courthouses stretching from VA to CO.

San Joaquin County, rapidly growing wealthy as a center for agriculture in the US, sought to make a bold statement with its new courthouse. It chose a nationally-known practitioner in Myers to reify Stockton's image as a city on the rise. The architectural historian, Michael R. Corbett, has observed: "For an appropriate image as a regional capital, San Joaquin [County] hired Elijah E. Myers, a Detroit architect who had already designed four state capitols--for Michigan, Idaho, Texas and Colorado, and who designed a total of 100 county courthouses scattered across the United States. Myers's design for San Joaquin County blended elements of massing and exterior detail from Michigan and Texas state capitols. Inside, perpindicular corridors met on each floor in a central skylit space under the dome, with stairs and balconies leading up to a public viewing area in the dome." (See Michael R. Corbett, "Continuity and Change in California Courthouse Design 1850-2000," in Ray McDevitt, ed., Courthouses of California: An Illustrated History, [San Francisco: California Hisorical Society, 2001], p. 25.)

Building Notes

J.A. Moross was the building contractor responsible for building Myers's plans.

The top of the dome featured a 500-pound, 12-foot-tall female statue personifying Justice; composed of gilded zinc, the statue was removed when the courthouse was razed in 1961 and relocated to the west lobby of the San Joaquin County Courthouse #3.

PCAD id: 20585