History

Cabell County was formed in 1809 and named for William H. Cabell, governor of Virginia at the time—Huntington would not become part of the new state of West Virginia until 1863. The city itself was founded in 1871 by Collis P. Huntington, the railroad magnate who made it the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. By the 1930s, Huntington had grown into a substantial industrial and commercial city, its economy rooted in railroads, glass manufacturing, and Ohio River trade.

The 1939 courthouse replaced an earlier structure and was built during the waning years of the New Deal, when the federal government still channeled significant resources into public buildings across the country. The Streamline Moderne design reflects the aesthetic preferences of the late Depression era: less ornate than the high Art Deco of the late 1920s, the building uses horizontal bands, smooth surfaces, and simplified geometric detailing to convey efficiency, permanence, and institutional confidence. The choice of materials—limestone and steel—underscored the ambition to build something that would last.

Throughout the postwar decades the courthouse continued to serve Cabell County’s judicial and administrative functions, adapting to changing court caseloads and bureaucratic needs without the wholesale demolition and replacement that erased many comparable buildings in larger cities. Today it remains the county’s primary government building, still recognizable as a product of the era when American civic architecture aspired to more than functional adequacy.