Paint job planned for halls, ceilings.

The epicenter of virtually all taxpayer contact with county government, the Warren County Courthouse houses everything from judicial court and serves as a one-stop shop for car tags and marriage licenses.

Another aspect of the 66-year-old building’s value to the community is its status as a Mississippi Landmark, protecting it from all forms of alteration large and small, transforming its aesthetic appeal to the level of a museum.

However, the years have perhaps been kinder to the granite-and-stone building’s exterior curiosities – the authoritative ram’s horns inscribed over the main entrance and the tower-like light fixtures that still make for a striking nighttime view – than what visitors see on the inside.

One of its most glaring needs figures to be addressed in the coming months, as plans are coming together to paint selected portions of the courthouse hallways and ceilings.

Starting with a section of ornate bordering encircling the entrance to Chancery Court on the third floor, a new color scheme will be displayed to the public that historic preservationists say will be visually appealing, yet complimentary.

&#8220It will be subtle, but it will really be beautiful,” said Nancy Bell of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation, who OK’d the concept of painting inside the courthouse with the Mississippi Department of Archives & History.

&#8220It’s a great building,” Bell said, adding the structure is one of the &#8220finest examples in Mississippi of a courthouse built in the art deco architectural style,” referencing a style popular in the years just before the courthouse was completed.

If Bell’s prediction holds true, it would likely be an improvement over the feelings of people who have worked in the courthouse for any length of time.

Some such as Chancery Clerk Dot McGee and deputy clerk Ann Tompkins agreed the entire inside needs some &#8220touching up.”

Others were less inhibited about how the courthouse interior is looking these days.

&#8220It needs to be painted, bad,” District Attorney Gil Martin said. &#8220I haven’t seen a paint crew in here in the past 30 years.”

Martin’s secretary and office manager, Pam Rushing, said even a touch-up on the walls here and there would enhance the image projected to visitors who don’t often see the inside of the building, particularly tourists.

&#8220It’s drab,” Rushing said, describing the yellowed, sometimes peeling paint that lines the walls just outside her second-floor office.

&#8220I love taking tourists through here, but this is the first thing they (tourists) see when I lead them to see the courtrooms,” Rushing said.

Assisting Bell in helping to choose possible color schemes and decorative advice is Anchuca bed and breakfast operator Tom Pharr, who in the words of District 4 Supervisor Carl Flanders, will be the &#8220free consultant” on the effort.

&#8220It will be in keeping with the historical significance of the building,” Pharr said.

The final look of newly repainted courthouse hallways, ceilings and door borders is undetermined, but one guide could be the colorful floor tile pattern featured on the first floor.

&#8220It’s neutral enough to keep the featured elements the same,” Pharr said.

The cost of painting the courthouse will not be known until plans progress further. In the past, Warren County supervisors had sought state money to do painting inside the courthouse, to no avail. Also, supervisors have only green-lighted the current idea in principle and no specific color scheme has been presented to the board yet.

But, most say some kind of sprucing-up is needed.

&#8220I’m excited about it,” District 4 Supervisor and Board President Carl Flanders said.

Once a color scheme is chosen and the first splatters of paint hit the walls, supervisors will invite comments from the public giving it either a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, Flanders said.

&#8220It epitomizes the community, used day in and day out by everyone,” Flanders said.

District 1 Supervisor David McDonald said &#8220he didn’t have a problem” with starting out with a sample, as current plans have it, and going from there.

District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon said it’s important that, whatever the color scheme Bell and Pharr choose, a presentation is made to the board.

&#8220They need to tell us,” Selmon said.

The 55,224-square-foot Warren County Courthouse, still casually referred to by some as the &#8220new” courthouse, was built for $375,000 as a Works Progress Administration project in 1940, six months behind schedule because, according to historical accounts, labor strife at a stone manufacturer in Indiana.

Architect Barney W. Havis drew the first designs for the building in miniature before it was enlarged to a working scale.

His final product features many a relic of the era in which it was built, including the tower lights in front and the hulking chandeliers that adorn the ceilings of the courtrooms.

Symbolism abounds in the artwork found there and elsewhere.

The ram’s horns inscribed above the front entrance were chosen by Havis’ firm to symbolize power and authority. A scroll with the The Ten Commandments inscribed on it appears on the upper portions of original light fixtures in Chancery Court.

An exterior feature that reveals the use of soapstone in the construction of the building are the crinkled-looking bands between windows, which can easily appear as though metal from far away.

Most curious among the oddities found inside is the private restroom at the end of a narrow hallway adjacent to the Board of Supervisors meeting room, one that features two showers next to the stalls.

That, Martin said, is left over from the days of sequestering all-male juries in what is now the meeting room instead of hotels. Jurors slept on cots inside the room and the arrangement was cheaper for the county, Martin said.

&#8220I guess it was cheaper. Also, there weren’t that many hotels then,” he said.

A story may exist behind the appearance of corn husks on staircase posts and the tower lights outside – then again, said Old Court House Museum-Eva W. Davis Memorial curator and director Bubba Bolm, it might not.

&#8220As I’ve heard, there was some kind of mixup at the manufacturer to where we got the corn and a building up in the Midwest got the magnolias,” Bolm said.