Early day justice often marked by disorder in the court

On Feb. 7 1901, Sandpoint became a real city and like all cities, it needed to be governed. It did not take long to realize that a place was needed for the governors as well as those who refused to be governed. Someone came up with the idea of combining the two and in 1904; a small building was constructed near the railroad station. The jail, with its four cells, was on the lower floor and upstairs the City Council sat on plain pine benches and made decisions that touched the life of the citizens. The use of pine benches was a stroke of brilliance because they discouraged the council meetings from turning into verbal marathons for people who delighted hearing the sound of their own voice. This new seat of power was called the “Apple Box.”

The people of Sandpoint had easy access to “City Hall” but the same could not be said for anyone needing to do county business. It meant a long journey to Rathdrum, ID, which was the county seat of Kootenai County. The bill splitting Bonner County from Kootenai County was passed in 1907, and there was immediate dis-order in the court.  The city of Sandpoint had a jail and council chambers but the new county government had offices that were scattered all over town. The treasurer and county commissioners were renting space from Ignatz Weil for $15 a month. The other arms of the new county government found themselves in various buildings and paying $60 per month in rent.

Building a courthouse was in order but politics and skeletons got in the way. Workers preparing the property on 1st Street, now 1st Avenue, found two skeletons barely covered with dirt. One was in a wooden box, a white man, and the other was an Indian. The area had once been an old Indian burial ground.

Not to be outdone the politicians brought their own political skeletons out of the closet. The republican commissioners could not agree with the one democrat and the project seemed stalled. That is when Mr. and Mrs. Ignatz Weil offered to build a temporary building and rent it to the county for $150 per month. The plans called for a two-story frame building to be placed on a part of the Weil orchard that fronted First Street. That was the area where the present courthouse now stands. In fact, the house many people call the McFarland house, located on 1st Avenue and Highway 95, was the Weil home.

Ignatz Weil feared that the frame building might be a fire hazard so he decided to use brick. This drove his cost up and he asked the County for $200 a month rental fee. Fearing the rent could be raised again prompted the commissioners to respond to Weil’s offer to sell the county the courthouse. His asking price was just what he had paid for the building plus a few dollars for the land, and it could be paid in installments. There finally came “order in the courthouse” and a decision to purchase the building was made in 1908.

In the 1930s the WPA made extensive alterations and additions to the original building. As time passed, it seemed as if the old building was brought before a judge and heard the following, “You are sentenced to five alteration and addition projects. These are to be carried out consecutively starting in 1973 and will continue until you lose all your character and any identifying features that would lead one to believe that you were ever a courthouse. You can no longer look out on 1st Avenue but must spend the rest of your days looking out on a parking lot.”