Rockingham County Courthouse (North Carolina)

The Rockingham County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located at Wentworth, Rockingham County, North Carolina. It was designed by Frank P. Milburn and built in 1907. It is a Classical Revival style red brick building that consists of a three-story hipped roofed main block flanked by later added two-story flat roofed wings. It features a low and broad polygonal cupola atop the tile roof. The 1907 courthouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, now houses the Museum and Archives of Rockingham County.

Originally, the first session of the Rockingham County Court met at Eagle Falls on the Dan River in 1786. In 1787 a courthouse was established near the center of the county and the settlement was known as Rockingham Courthouse. However, in 1798, the General Assembly of North Carolina passed an act which established the county seat to be known as Wentworth at the site of the 1787 Courthouse. This courthouse was replaced by a brick courthouse in 1824 and this building was considerably remodeled in a more Victorian style in 1881. On October 2, 1906 a terrific fire destroyed the old courthouse and a new one, designed by famed architect Frank Pierce Milburn, was constructed at a cost of $25,000. The newer courthouse was composed almost entirely of bricks and had two beautiful rounded pillars which quickly became a trademark of the Wentworth community. It was at this courthouse in August 1932 that Broadway torch singer Libby Holman posted bond when she was charged (later acquitted) with the alleged murder of her husband, tobacco heir Z. Smith Reynolds of Winston-Salem. Additions to the courthouse were made in the 1930s, 1960s and 1970s. In 1982 former Vice President Walter Mondale gave a speech at the courthouse prior to his candidacy for President in 1984. A couple of years later the old historic superior courtroom was stripped of its fittings and gutted to make two smaller and inadequate courtrooms. In May 2011, a new 184,516 square foot Rockingham County courthouse, also known as the "Rockingham County Justice Center," opened its doors at a location one mile east of the historic village area where the courthouses had been since 1787. Construction of this new state-of-the-art building cost $39,059,000, after an originally projected cost of $37,757,000. The three-story Justice Center houses county law enforcement services as well as the county courthouse. This new facility is praised, if never for its beauty, certainly for its efficient irrigation, pollution prevention, water conservation, and use of recycled materials in its structure.