“The Lamoille County Courthouse is located at 154 Main Street in Hyde Park, the shire town of Lamoille County, Vermont. Built in 1912 to a design by Burlington architect Zachary Taylor Austin (1850–1910), it is a good example of Romanesque and Colonial Revival architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.[1]
The Lamoille County Courthouse is centrally located in the village of Hyde Park, amid a cluster of other government buildings set back from the south side of Main Street. It is an imposing 2+1⁄2-story brick building, with 3+1⁄2-story pyramid-roofed tower rising from the front left corner. The main roof is hipped, with dormers projecting from each side, and a low pyramidal roof at the front right corner. The tower has a square belfry stage below the roof, which is pierced by dormered clock faces and topped by a weathervane. The front facade is five bays wide, with a single-story porch extending across the center three bays. It is supported by round columns, and has Union Jack balustrade both on the ground floor, and encircling its roof. Second-floor windows are set in round-arch openings, with the outer and central bays housing doubled windows.[2]
The county’s first courthouse was built in Hyde Park in 1836, not long after the county was created by the state legislature, and Hyde Park was chosen as its shire town. That courthouse and 17 other buildings were destroyed by Hyde Park’s “Great Fire” in 1910; county records were preserved in fireproof safes. The present building was built in 1911–12 to a design by Burlington architect Zachary Taylor Austin. It is stylistically a distinctive blend of the Colonial Revival and Romanesque Revival, a combination not seen in the state’s other county courthouses. The interior, which includes a large courtroom spanning the second floor, has seen little alteration since its construction. It is believed that this building’s fire vaults may be those from the 1836 courthouse.[2]”-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamoille_County_Courthouse
Romanesque Revival Style Architecture, 1840’s into the early 20th century in the United States:
“Features to Look For:
-Castle or fortress-like exteriors; heavy, rough stone or brick walls
-Steeply pitched hip roofs
-Bold, heavy half-round arches around doorways and windows
-Towers or projecting bays
The architecture of the Romanesque era (A.D. 800-1150) in Europe presented Victorian builders with simple, sturdy models that could be adapted to 19th century needs. Towns, church congregations, and railroads were the most frequent clients of this style, popular for large-scale public buildings, such as courthouses, city halls, train depots, and churches. Few homeowners chose to build in the Romanesque Revival mode.
Romanesque Revival buildings usually have compact plans and blocky massing. The single most characteristic feature of the style is the use of heavy masonry (brick or roughly finished stone) walls pierced by massive, multiple coursed round arches. Architects placed massive corner towers and lofty hip roofs to give buildings a medieval fortress impression.
The Romanesque Revival style first appeared in Indiana as early as the 1850s. This early phase of the style was imported by German architects and was influenced by a new interest in Romanesque architecture, which developed in Europe during the mid 1800s. Later in the century, American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86) greatly popularized Romanesque-inspired buildings. Structures that follow his designs closely are often termed “Richardsonian Romanesque” style buildings. The style remained popular in Indiana until about 1910.”-https://www.in.gov/dnr/historic-preservation/learn-about-topics/buildings-and-bridges/architectural-styles/romanesque-revival-style/
Colonial Revival Style Architecture, 1880-1960:
Identifiable Features:
Columned porch or portico
Front door sidelights
Pedimented door, windows or dormers
Broken pediment over front door
Pilasters
Symmetrical Facade
Double-hung windows, often multi-paned
Bay windows or paired or triple windows
Wood shutters often with incised patterns
Decorative pendants
Side gabled or hipped roofs
Cornice with dentils or modillions
Common Building Types:
Houses
Banks
Churches
Schools
Government offices
Commercial buildings
“One of the most frequently produced and enduring popular styles in America is the Colonial Revival style. It can be seen in a seemingly endless variety of forms throughout the state and the country and still continues to influence residential architecture today. Basically, the Colonial Revival style was an effort to look back to the Federal and Georgian architecture of America’s founding period for design inspiration. Less commonly, the Post-Medieval English and Dutch Colonial house forms were an influence on the Colonial Revival style. This enthusiasm to explore the architecture of America’s founding period was generated in part by the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 celebrating the country’s 100th birthday. This trend was further promoted by the Columbian Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago.
Like most revival efforts, the Colonial Revival style did not generally produce true copies of earlier styles. Although, in the early years of the 20th century (1915-1935) there was a real interest in studying and duplicating Georgian period architecture. Generally, the Colonial Revival style took certain design elements – front façade symmetry, front entrance fanlights and sidelights, pedimented doorways, porches and dormers – and applied them to larger scale buildings. These colonial era details could be combined in a great variety of ways, creating many subtypes within this style.
In the 1940s and 1950s a more simplified version of the Colonial Revival style became popular for homes, usually featuring a two story building, a side-gabled or hipped roof, classically inspired door surrounds and windows, shutters and dormers. Less common are examples of the Dutch Colonial Revival which are distinguished by a gambrel roof, and sometimes a shallow pent roof over the first floor. Likewise, there are fewer examples of the Colonial Revival style with a second story overhang inspired by the form of Post Medieval English buildings.
The Colonial Revival style was also popular for public buildings, applying common achitectural details of the style to a larger form. Colonial Revival public buildings include government offices, post offices, libraries, banks, schools and churches.”-http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/architecture/styles/colonial-revival.html