The landmark Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis is undergoing $27.5 million in renovations through the middle of 2025.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the project will include four new exhibits, more accessibility and structural improvements.
The Old Courthouse is part of the nearby Gateway Arch National Park complex. Both are fewer than 10 blocks east of the Tucker Boulevard alignment of Route 66.
More details from the newspaper about the forthcoming improvements:
One room will be given over to explore the story of Dred and Harriet Scott, whose 1847 trial in the building stoked tensions that led to the Civil War.
Dred Scott, a slave, filed suit for his freedom, contending that he should be free because had lived in the free state of Wisconsin.
Scott lost that case — the only one that was held in the Old Courthouse — but he won on appeal. His former owner appealed that decision, and Scott lost at the Missouri Supreme Court and later, in a notorious decision, at the U.S. Supreme Court. […]
The new exhibit will focus on their perspective and the 11-year battle that led to their eventual freedom.
Providing context for that exhibit is another new one, “Pathways to Freedom,” which will examine the life of Black people in St. Louis at that time.
Another room will be furnished like a courtroom of the 1870s, while another will look at the architecture, craftsmanship and crafts that went into the original construction of the Old Courthouse.
The 1816 courthouse, built in stages, once was Missouri’s tallest habitable building.
The courthouse was abandoned in 1930, and it soon became a part of the future Gateway Arch complex, then called the Jefferson Expansion National Memorial.
(Image of the Old Courthouse in St. Louis by Warren LeMay via Flickr)
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