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Red Brick Courthouse gets a minor face-lift

Historic building undergoing minor renovations

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette Electrician Jose Chicas walks past a likeness of Judge John Vinson, one of the first judges to serve in what is now the Red Brick Courthouse in 1891, as workers continue with renovations at the historic structure in downtown Rockville.

For the past three weeks, work crews have been painting, replacing carpet and upgrading utilities in the structure that once faced demolition.

The offices of Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation Inc., a nonprofit group that helped restore the building and occupies part of the first floor, have been closed for two weeks while work occurred.

‘‘It’s a lot lighter and brighter in here now,” Maude McGovern, Peerless office manager, said last week.

Painters have been busy on the ground and first floors. Electricians are installing additional outlets and plumbers are replacing fixtures. Plexiglas windows, installed by the county over the years, have been replaced with glass ones.

Along the way, workers covered some lead paint and uncovered asbestos floor tiles that had to be replaced, adding to the $142,500 bill, county officials said.

The tiles, a precursor to modern linoleum ones, posed no health hazard because they were intact and covered by carpet, Jamie MacKinnon, head of the county renovation unit, said. They were removed as is required, he said.

Additional work will include exterior painting on the edgework of the windows. A remote heating and air conditioning control system, operated by the county, is being updated. In the future, the slate roof, which leaked in 2003, will be repaired.

The upgrades are not taking place in the Grand Courtroom on the third floor, which has been home to Montgomery County Circuit Judge Robert A. Greenberg since January.

‘‘The acoustics are terrible, but the view is fantastic,” Greenberg said. ‘‘It looks like a real courtroom.”

Greenberg has been presiding over juvenile cases in the building because of space limitations in District Court facilities. Juvenile Court falls under the auspices of the Circuit Court, but had been housed in the District Court building.

While security has been beefed up at the entrances, no incarcerated defendants need to enter the building.

The Red Brick Courthouse, built in Richardsonian Romanesque style and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, at one point served all functions of local government. It is the county’s third courthouse constructed on the site and was built at a cost of $50,000.

Money was allocated to demolish the building in the 1960s, but residents objected. In the 1990s, Peerless Rockville helped raise funds for renovations.

The upgrades should be completed in six weeks, said Wayne Nebel, chief of county facilities maintenance operations.