History

Mercer County was formed in 1837 from Logan and Tazewell counties and named for General Hugh Mercer, the Scottish-born physician and officer who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Princeton during the American Revolution—a connection that likely reflects the same Revolutionary-era memory that named the county. The region’s economic character was shaped by the late nineteenth-century coal boom: the Flat Top Coal Field, which runs through Mercer County, was among the richest bituminous coal deposits in the eastern United States, and by the early twentieth century, Princeton was a prosperous county seat with railroad connections to the coalfields above and the manufacturing cities below.

The courthouse was built in 1932 as the Depression’s first wave was hitting the coalfields hard—coal demand had collapsed, mines were laying off workers, and the regional economy was contracting. The decision to proceed with a substantial new courthouse in Art Deco style nonetheless reflects the institutional priorities of county government, which continued to function and to invest in its infrastructure even as the private economy stalled. Art Deco was by then the dominant idiom for new public buildings across the United States, conveying both modernity and stability to a population that needed reassurance on both fronts.

Mercer County’s economy evolved through the twentieth century as coal employment declined and service industries grew. The courthouse has continued as the seat of county government, serving the administrative and judicial needs of a county whose population and economy have shifted significantly since the building was designed.