After an attempt to move the county seat from Warren to Argyle, county officers returned to Warren by February 1882, several months after the Legislature reset the county seat at Warren. In spring 1882, county officials decided to provide no more than $5,000 to build and furnish a courthouse. To make use of the original courthouse lot, the first one-room frame courthouse built in 1880 was moved to the rear of the lot and eventually used as the county jail.
By 1900, a square, two-story yellow brick courthouse had been built in a simplified Romanesque style. Its most prominent feature was a tall cupola that rose squarely above the central pavilion of the entrance. Soon, the building proved too small and a second, matching building was built in front of the first in 1910. A hallway and stairwell connected the two, giving the complex an H-shape. The main entry was through triple arches below a high, pointed gable on the newer half of the buidling.
A.F. Gauger of St. Paul designed the second building and Henry Lange built it at a cost of $30,115, plus $2,000 used to remodel the 1900 building.
The current "courthouse" is the flat, two-story Marshall County Law Enforcement Center, which was built of vertically-laid bricks in 1974. The new Center was designed by Architectural Resources, Inc. of Hibbing and built by Witcher Construction Co. for about $800,000.
Historical information adapted from "The First 100 Years... The Minnesota State Bar Association."
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