Art Deco Erie County, Ohio

On the southern shore of Lake Erie, half way between Toledo and Cleveland is Sandusky. Sandusky is the county seat of Erie County. In the 1930s the county had 42 thousand people, and the city 24 thousand.

The courthouse was built in a Second Empire style (1874). Roosevelt's Public Works Administration remodeled the building changing the exterior in late art deco style. The central steeple remained, but the surfaces became very clean, sharp and rectilinear. Two architectural medallions were added. One was a bald eagle (symbol of the United States), the other an allegorical figure of Equity, or possibly a guarantor of equity.

Equity, in common parlance is fairness. Now, small children (and even dogs) voice objections to actions they seem as unfair. They need no education this, they know it by nature. In natural law, as it developed in republican Rome, it was recognised that certain principles existed in all nations, and this law must be superior [in some fashion] to civil law of any particular nation.

This figure has art deco stylized hair and beard [not the clothing]of a Babylonian king in the age of Abraham. Hammurabi had a code of laws in this period, and they are known to-day. There is a tablet icon of the Ten Commandments delivered by Moses the Lawgiver. There is the fasces (bundled birch rods, and bronze axe) which stood for the magisterium, and the Roman Republic. There is also, the scales of justice.

This is wonderful decoration. For a courthouse the dense, civil iconography is concise and complete culturally for the activities that were meant to happen in this building. Beyond this time [1938 on the new cornerstone] it is hard to find such artistic, architectural artifice. For such a populated locale that was stable in population, and not very great, there would not be so much more opportunity sites. There are some handsome churches, a post office redone as a carousel museum, and an adequate business district with a 1920s picture show building. To-day's city population is just barely above 1938's. I did not see a newer building worth describing.