A sign in front of neighboring historic properties on Adams Street is all the advertising Warren County needs to pitch the historic structures to potential buyers, supervisors said this week.

Since placing the two county-owned sites on the market in December for $172,000, interest has been nil in the package deal but curiosity high, board members were told by their attorney Monday.

“(City attorney) Nancy Thomas asked what was going on with the building,” legal counsel Blake Teller told supervisors when pressed about a request of the county to have the city building inspectors check that each structure is watertight. “I would like (county buildings and grounds chief) Chuck Thornton to have the opportunity to assess it for water tightness.”

Teller said he was also approached by Nancy Bell, of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historical Preservation, to take pictures of the former court building, at 1019 Adams St., and 1015 Adams St., once home to the Verhine law firm, for a flyer that could be sent around to advertise the sale. Each is in the city’s historic preservation district, where tight regulations exist on altering buildings deemed historically significant and requests for activity go through the city’s Board of Architectural Review.

Supervisors, who fought with the city to demolish the buildings for two decades to tear them down for either a new justice court or additional parking, dismissed the requests quickly in lieu of a new formal notice.

“They’ve noticed other property owners about their expectations, intentions, all sorts of things,” District 5 Supervisor Richard George said. “You take the old Kuhn Memorial Hospital, for instance. It has no windows, no doors. What’s the difference?”

“We get a flyer for free every day in the newspaper,” George said. “All we need is a buyer.”

Concern over losing control of the message if flyers with photos of the buildings were hawked in or out of town ended debate.

“I’ll take that as a ‘don’t get Chuck Thornton to assess the property’,” Teller said.

Completed in the 1870s, the red brick structure at 1019 Adams St. was the law office of John Prewitt before he became a circuit court judge. In 1984, the county purchased the structure for $126,000 to be home to the justice court, a move that ran afoul of the city’s historic preservation district regulations that bar razing historic properties in most cases. In 2002, the three justice court judges were moved to 921 Farmer St. and the building essentially became a storage bin.

Built in the 1890s, 1015 Adams St. was home to Verhine & Verhine law firm from 1991 to 2002, according to city directories. The county paid $46,000 for the old house, officials have said.

The fate of both buildings was tossed back and forth among the three boards for the next 12 years. In 2004 and 2005, the county again sought to raze the buildings. The board put a 150-day stay on each request, but the county took no action. In April, the issue was revived from dormancy and, in December, came to a head after the city backed up its Board of Architectural Review’s decision in October to deny the county’s latest request to tear the buildings down. It left the county with two options — take the issue to chancery court or put the properties up for sale.

They did so in a series of votes Dec. 18 that set the price based on what the county paid for the structures.

State preservationists put the greater significance on the more run-down former Verhine firm over the statelier-looking former court building in a letter to the county last year.