Various locations were donated or rented for county and court business until 1889, when James Cutler donated land in Todd Township and a two-story building was built there. Partially destroyed by fire a few years later, the building was later returned to the township for use as a town hall.
On September 23, 1899, the county applied for a $15,000 loan from the state to build a courthouse in Park Rapids. Cyrus Hollinger presented the county with land and M.E. Beebe designed the new building. N.C. Bacheller of LaCrosse, WI, built a two-story brick rectangle courthouse at a cost of $13,485.
The building stood on a stone foundation and included shallow pavilions rising to low pediments on each side. A flat-topped low hip roof looks like the classic Georgian style. A square belvedere topped by a French Empire convex done enhanced the center front until it was lost during high winds. The building is shown above in a 1983 photograph.
Since the construction of the current courthouse in 1975, the old courthouse has been renovated into the Hubbard County Historical Society Museum and the North Country Museum of Arts.
The new courthouse has a dark brick face over a steel frame. The 32,484 square feet of space is divided between a main office building and a judicial building. Koehnlein/Lightowler/Johnson, Inc. designed it. The building's most impressive feature is glass surrounding the entrance that rises through all three stories, supported only by narrow steel mullions at wide intervals. Twin City Construction, Inc. of Fargo, N.D., built the $1.25 million building.
This picture shows the courthouse as it looked in 1910.
Historical information adapted from "The First 100 Years... The Minnesota State Bar Association."
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