The Old DuPage County Courthouse is a Richardsonian Romanesque

Richardsonian Romanesque

Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after architect Henry Hobson Richardson, whose masterpiece is Trinity Church, Boston , designated a National Historic Landmark...

 style court house designed by Mifflin E. Bell

Mifflin E. Bell

Mifflin Emlen Bell was an American architect who served from 1883 to 1886 as Supervising Architect of the US Treasury Department...

 in Wheaton

Wheaton, Illinois

Wheaton is an affluent community located in DuPage County, Illinois, approximately west of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Wheaton is the county seat of DuPage County...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

. It was constructed in 1896 and housed many important events. Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...

 defended George Munding in a trial in 1924 that made regional headlines. The first execution by electrocution

Electric chair

Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body...

 was sentenced here in 1931. The courthouse operated until 1990, when the present day DuPage County Courthouse was built. In danger of being demolished, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in 1978.