This Romanesque Revival building in Richmond, Indiana, is the Wayne County Courthouse. Designed by architect James W. McLaughlin (1834-1923), it was built in the early 1890s and finished in 1893. Much of the building is light gray-brown Mississippian skeletal-oolitic limestone (just below) from Lawrence County in southern Indiana. The grainy nature of the limestone is visible in the overhanging surface at the upper left of the image below.

Below the limestone, the base of the building (see below) is a dark gray "granite" (perhaps a granodiorite?) quarried in Concord, New Hampshire (the Granite State).

Above the limestone, the roof of the building is gray slate (no closeup available). Note how its foliated nature makes it reflective in the wet conditions shown above in late November 2001. The original roof was red slate. The building thus employs all three major rock types (igneous in the base, sedimentary in most of the walls, and metamorphic on the roof). The lower two are easily examined on the south side of the building; if the roof were accessible, the building could be used a petrologic teaching tool.

Information about the Wayne County Courthouse came from WayneNet.

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