The Bristol County Superior Courthouse was designed by architect Frank Irving Cooper from nearby Bridgewater and built in 1894 in the Romanesque-style. The stone structure contains a 170-foot (52 m) tall central tower capped with a copper dome. The building's large hip roof is also entirely clad in copper. The dome was originally topped with a large copper flame, which was taken down in the recent past for fear that it may fall. The flame is currently in storage, and the hope is that it will be restored as part of the construction project that began in 2008.
The superior courthouse is the fourth courthouse to be located on or near this site since 1747, when Taunton became the shire town (county seat) for Bristol County, Massachusetts, after Bristol was split off from the Bay State and became part of Rhode Island.
Bristol County, Massachusetts also contains historic superior courthouses in Fall River and New Bedford.
Read more about this topic: Bristol County Courthouse Complex
Famous quotes containing the words bristol, county, superior and/or courthouse:
“Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!
It tips the guard’s cutlass and silvers this nook;
But ‘twill die in the dawning of Billy’s last day.
A jewel-block they’ll make of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end
Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly—
O, ‘tis me, not the sentence they’ll suspend.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Hold hard, my county darlings, for a hawk descends,
Golden Glamorgan straightens, to the falling birds.
Your sport is summer as the spring runs angrily.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“To have more virtues than talents is to be a superior person; to have more talents than virtues is to be an inferior one.”
—Chinese proverb.
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)