Architect family designed VW Courthouse

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

With restoration work planned for the historic Van Wert County Courthouse, it’s perhaps appropriate to look back at the family of architects that built what is arguably the county’s most recognized landmark.

Following a story on restoration/maintenance efforts for the courthouse, The Van Wert independent received an email from John C. Tolan, a 1968 Van Wert High School graduate who now lives in Alta Loma, California.

Tolan noted that the courthouse was designed by his great-great-uncle, Thomas Jefferson Tolan, assisted by T.J. Tolan’s son, Brentwood S. Tolan.

Thomas Jefferson Tolan was born in 1830 in Carrollton in eastern Ohio, the son of James and Elizabeth Tolan. The family later moved to the Delphos area, where a brother of T.J. Tolan, D.H. Tolan, founded The Delphos Herald newspaper, and was also Allen County Clerk of Courts for a time.

Tolan & Son Architects was itself based in Delphos until 1874, when the father-and-son firm moved its offices to Fort Wayne, Indiana. That was the same year the architectural firm received a commission to design Van Wert County’s new courthouse.

Until that time, the firm had specialized in designing combined sheriff’s residences and jails throughout the area, including the old Allen County, Ohio, and Mercer County jails. At that time, a sheriff’s family resided in living quarters built into jail facilities and the sheriff’s wife usually was responsible for providing meals to jail inmates. In fact, T.J. Tolan was awarded a patent in 1877 for his improved bars for jails and prisons.

Although the Van Wert County Courthouse commission was the first such project for Tolan & Sons, it wasn’t the last, as the firm went on to build nine more courthouses, including ones in Davis County, Iowa, Henry County, Illinois, and Delaware County (Muncie), Whitley County (Columbia City), Lagrange County (Lagrange), LaPorte County (LaPorte), Kosciusko County (Warsaw) and Allen County (Fort Wayne) in Indiana.

The Van Wert County Courthouse took two years to complete, with dedication in 1876, and Tolan & Son Architects’ business also flourished during that time. In addition to sheriff’s residences/jails and courthouses, the firm designed the Masonic Temple in Fort Wayne and First United Methodist Church in Van Wert.

T.J. Tolan died suddenly of a gallstone attack at the age of 52 while in Chicago, Illinois. His son went on to design a number of courthouses and other buildings, a number of which are on the National Register of Historic Places. He later became a partner in the Lima architectural firm of DeCurtin, Rawson and Tolan and died June 30, 1923. Both T. J. Tolan and Brentwood Tolan are  buried in Delphos.

Meanwhile, the Tolans’ first courthouse project here in Van Wert County is still standing after 138 years. Furthermore, with a multiphase restoration/maintenance project now in the works, the historic building could last another century, or more.