Tim Leeds Havre Daily News tleeds@havredailynews.com
Construction workers remodeling the first floor of the Hill County Courthouse uncovered a piece of history when they tore some drywall off of a wall in the women’s restroom: a mural painted in 1915, when the courthouse was constructed, on what was the back wall of a rotunda that extended four floors up to the dome in the roof. Hill County Clerk and Recorder Diane Mellem said she remembers the first time she walked into the courthouse as a young woman in 1968. “I was just in awe. I had never seen a rotunda. You could stand in the basement and holler up to the fourth floor,” she said. The mural, painted directly on the plaster of the wall, is of American Indians driving bison off of a cliff, in a style reminiscent of Montana painter CharlesM. Russell. Hill County Clerk and Recorder Diane Mellem said her office did some research and found that the Hill County Commission hired the interior design firm of Odin Oyen from La Crosse, Wis., to decorate the interior of the courthouse and the county jail. The name of the artist is missing from the mural, possibly destroyed during the remodeling, but “1915,” perhaps showing the year it was painted, is still visible. Hill County Commission Chair Mike Anderson said the courthouse was remodeled, with the rotunda eliminated, in the 1970s. That was done after the state Legislature, to save energy during the oil crunch of that decade, ordered empty spaces like rotundas eliminated, he said. The next session, the Legislature eliminated that law, but the work had already begun on the Hill County Courthouse, Anderson said. Anderson added that the Commission has been trying without success to find anyone with photographs taken inside the courthouse before it was remodeled. If anyone would come forward with photographs, showing what the interior used to look like, the Commission would like to make copies of the photos, he said. The plans for remodeling the basement include adding two doors to the wall where the mural is painted. Anderson said the Commission would like to preserve the mural, but hasn’t figured out how to remove it without destroying it as of yet. Mellem said the interior of the courthouse was magnificent before the remodeling in the 1970s. The walls, ceiling and floor were all of blonde marble, with the rotunda dominating the scene when someone entered. The pillars that formed the front corners of the rotunda are still visible on the second floor of the courthouse. Mellem said she can remember when she walked up the steps and through the main doors looking down over the railing at the mural of the bison kill site on the first floor. “I remember looking up andThinking This is like a castle,’” she said. “I felt like a princess.” Mellem said there were paintings on each floor, and added that she believes the original murals are probably still hidden behind walls at least on the second and third floors. She said there was a walkway behind the rotunda on the second floor that the Clerk and Recorders Office would chain off and use during elections, a space they called “the cage.” Former Hill County Commissioner Antoinette Toni’ Hagener said at least one mural had been covered by a new painting, which was removed during the remodeling and taken to the H. Earl Clack Memorial Museum. Intricately designed and painted cornices, molding generally set along the top of a wall, were also removed during the remodeling and originally taken to the museum, she added. “They were decorated like pillars,” she said. “They were quite attractive.” The railing around the three open sides of the rotunda were also highly decorative, Hagener said. Former Hill County Clerk of Court, Auditor and Commissioner Nora Nelson said she remembers the remodeling. “We had to live with all that dust and stuff,” she said. Nelson added that sometimes improvements seem to ruin beautiful old buildings, but government officials have to respond to laws and economic pressures and space requirements. “You’re trying to do the best you can,” Nelson said. The firm of Odin Oyen had grown to national recognition by the time it was commissioned to decorate the Hill County buildings. It had also decorated other public buildings, churches, the Masonic Temple Building in Billings as well as private and business buildings in Montana before working on the Hill County Courthouse, according to a document published by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The university document lists a project in “Chateau County” in Havre, with no date listed. The Hill County Courthouse was built following the separation, in 1912, of the northern part of Chouteau County from its southern part and it being split into Hill, Blaine and Liberty Counties. On the Net: Catalog of Odin Oyen Collection, from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse: http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu /digital/lacrosse/OyenCatalog/t ext.html
