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was translated into a petition to the General Assembly asking for authorization to levy up to
$10,000 for this purpose. This petition was granted, as was another of the next year, which
permitted the Levy Court to borrow up to the full sum allowed in advance of the collections of
the levy.15 According to the editor of the Montgomery County volume of the Inventory of the
County and Town Archives of Maryland, (No. 15), this courthouse was finished in 1840.
Neither he nor this writer has been able to find a description of the building or any infor-
mation about its cost or the name of the architect and the builder. We do know, however,
that it had two one-story wings, because in 1872 the county commissioners of Montgomery
County were authorized "to raise the two wings of the Court House of said county, in Rock-
ville, to the square of the main building, and to finish the same suitable to be occupied as
rooms for the County Commissioners, the Grand Jury or such other purposes as the public
interest may require ....... " 16
Third Courthouse at Rockville
The space provided by these additions proved to be adequate for the needs of the county
for another twenty years when it became obvious that no further additions or annexes would
be economical. Thereupon the General Assembly was asked for, and it granted, permission
to raze the old courthouse as well as the building occupied by the county school commissioners
and to build a new fireproof courthouse which would also accommodate the school commis-
sioners." For this purpose a bond issue of $50,000 was authorized as well as the expenditure
of any proceeds derived from the materials of the two old buildings. The contractor was to
be the lowest bidder and he was to agree to have the building ready for occupancy by October 1,
1891. This third courthouse in Rockville is still standing and forms an annex to the fourth
courthouse. Frank E. Davis was the architect and Thomas P. Johns the contractor. It is a
three-story red brick building surmounted by a tower. It was never fireproof, nor could it be
considered handsome or graceful even by the criteria of that day.
Fourth Courthouse at Rockville
By 1929, the county government had again outgrown its office space. In that year a bond
issue was authorized for a new building and for the purchase of an additional triangle of
ground close by the old courthouse.18 When the funds provided in this act proved to be
insufficient, supplementary funds were authorized at the next General Assembly.19 The court-
house which resulted was designed by Delos H. Smith and Thomas R. Edwards of Washington
and built by the J. J. McDevitt Company of Charlotte, North Carolina. "It is constructed of
Indiana limestone in the classic tradition. This style as known in modern work is distin-
guished by the use of columns, cornice and the regular repetition of piers or pilasters, which
accent the facade in a series of vertical divisions which contain windows and are symmetrical
on either side of a central axis. Exterior steps form the base of a portico of four monolithic
columns in the Ionic order, with a pediment above. It was built in 1931 at a cost exceeding
$500,000, and is completely fireproof." 20 The old courthouse was retained and is also used for
county purposes along with a new county building which was finished in 1953.
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15Ch. 164 ; Ch. 237, Acts of 1836.
16 Ch. 76.
17Ch. 41, Acts of 1890.
18 Ch. 349.
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18 Ch. 330, Acts of 1931.
19 Charles B. Hirschfeld, Editor, Inventory of the County
and Town Archives of Maryland, No. 15, Montgomery County,
Baltimore, 1939, p. 31.
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