photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Jay Zimmerschied, Douglas County's director of capital projects, points out features of the newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

One of the many painstaking parts of the historic Douglas County Courthouse’s recent renovation was DOUGLAS COUNTY COURT HOUSE itself.

The decorative lettering near the courthouse’s front entrance was among the features of the more than 100-year-old building that were in bad shape, said Jay Zimmerschied, Douglas County’s director of capital projects, earlier this week. “There were chunks of letters missing.”

But the whole thing couldn’t be fixed all in one chunk, he said, because historic preservation standards want you to save as much of the original material as possible.

“On a stone like that, they want to keep that stone,” he said. “They don’t want you to take it away. So you wind up patching it.” Sure enough, look closely enough at the letters, and you might notice some new pieces added on: “a little bit on the ‘L,’ a little bit on top of the ‘G.'”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Decorative lettering at the newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. Some parts of the letters had to be replaced.

If you walk around the historic courthouse’s newly renovated exterior, you’ll find lots of fixes like this, from the stairs to the gutters to the window ledges. The scaffolding and fencing that have surrounded the courthouse for months are gone, and new landscaping will soon be coming in.

It’s all necessary to keep one of downtown Lawrence’s most recognizable buildings in good condition: “Can’t think of a building more worth it,” Zimmerschied said.

County spokeswoman Karrey Britt said the project was done in two phases – one to waterproof the flood-prone basement, which cost about $1.5 million, and another to restore the masonry above ground, which cost about $906,000. She said tax credits and grant funding would help with some of that; the county received $90,000 in grant money and estimates it will receive about $326,000 in historic preservation tax credits.

The top priority for repairs was the basement, which houses the county appraiser and geographic information systems. It wasn’t waterproofed when the courthouse was built back in 1904, Zimmerschied said.

“They stacked stone up for foundations – they weren’t even pouring concrete at that point,” he said. That construction method allowed water to seep in and damage the building’s interior, including the plaster on the walls, some of which still needs to be replaced.

“Any time you get a significant amount of water around the site, we would recognize water infiltration in the basement, and his guys would be over there cleaning it up,” said Zimmerschied, pointing at Jimmy Wilkins, the county’s director of buildings, grounds and maintenance.

They also had to replace the sanitary line in the basement, Zimmerschied said. “The original sanitary line had almost collapsed. Not good.”

Zimmerschied said this part of the work was “not pretty,” because it was below the ground. “But it’s really a very important thing to get done, to make the basement truly usable for the future,” he said.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Though the basement of the Douglas County Courthouse has been waterproofed now, some of the damaged plaster has yet to be replaced.

Above ground, the mortar joints of the building where water can seep in were due to be repointed, and many stones on the exterior “envelope” of the building were deteriorating. With some historic buildings, Zimmerschied said, repairs get delayed until parts start falling off, and he didn’t want that happening here.

So they flew a drone around the courthouse and identified well over 100 stones that needed to be replaced.

Some of the largest stones required a crane to replace, but most were smaller and could be worked on using a lift, Zimmerschied said. There were even some that didn’t need a complete replacement – they could get by with just a part being taken out and replaced, which is called a “Dutchman repair.”

“Ideally in the historic world, you leave as much of the original material in place as you can,” Zimmerschied said. “It’s better to have that.”

The new limestone came from a quarry in the southeastern part of the state, and you can recognize it on the outside of the building by its lighter color. While the crews did clean the existing stones to remove the grime that accumulates on them over time, they’re still darker than the new ones because of their exposure to the sun and other environmental factors.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Lighter new stone and darker old stone can be seen at the newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Lighter new stone on an ornamental “scroll” and darker old stone can be seen at the newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

Some parts required extra attention to detail, like those stone letters. There are decorative “scrolls” and other ornamental features that required the services of a sculptor; Zimmerschied said there were five of those in this project.

Then there are the stairs on the north side. They weren’t up to safety standards before, so the county had planted bushes in front of them to prevent people from going up on them. When the crews began working on them, they found a construction flaw of the kind that was all too normal in the early 1900s.

“They built the wing walls, and took all the stone rubble from chiseling all of these and dumped it in here as filler,” Zimmerschied said of the building’s original construction. “That’s what we found under the treads.”

Now, the stairs are stable and have a new, safer railing. The doors on the north side still won’t be an entrance – there’s an office right behind them, and Britt said they were sealed shut – but county staff has seen people sitting on them and enjoying some ice cream from Sylas and Maddy’s across the street.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Jay Zimmerschied, director of capital projects for Douglas County, points out the railing on the Douglas County Courthouse’s north steps on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. The part of the railing he’s touching is old, but the vertical sheets of metal are new and meant to make the stairs safer.

With the bulk of the exterior work done, only some finishing touches remain. One of them is landscaping. As the Journal-World reported, several trees on the courthouse lawn died due to a lack of irrigation during the construction and had to be cut down.

The irrigation system was actually “torn out” when the below-grade work was done, Wilkins said. But the replacement and new landscaping should start in the next couple of weeks, and the new trees will be hardier varieties than the old ones.

Another priority is window washing. “Getting the windows done is the next biggest thing,” Wilkins said, “because nobody has any idea the last time all these windows were washed. It could have been 50 years ago.”

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

A window washer cleans the Douglas County Courthouse windows on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

Wilkins said he’s exploring getting a new lighting system to illuminate the courthouse exterior at night. And there’s one other finishing touch he’s planning.

It has to do with the old stones. Most of them came down in pieces, Wilkins said, but the county did keep “a truckload” of the larger ones that were removed and stored them at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

“I do have a plan to build a bench out by the flagpole out of some of the stones that were removed from the building,” Wilkins said, with a plaque saying where they came from.

Britt, for her part, is looking forward to having grass around the courthouse again. She said she was grateful for the expertise of Zimmerschied, Wilkins and their teams to get the building in good shape.

“It’s a very big job to take care of this historic courthouse,” Britt said.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

New pipes on the newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The newly renovated Douglas County Courthouse is pictured on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.