Jul 17, 2025 By Mike Jones 4 min read

Finding new doors for a historic landmark like the Washington County Courthouse isn’t as easy as going down to the local home improvement store and pulling them off the shelf.

So county workers have spent the past five years painstakingly researching information on the six, 10-foot-tall doors made of Brazilian mahogany wood that line the front of the 125-year-old courthouse in an effort to decide whether they can be refurbished or must be replaced.

“You know how important it is that we want to get the details right,” said Justin Welsh, who is director of the county’s Building and Grounds Department. “It’s not something you can buy at your local Home Depot.”

While Welsh said they looked into every option to refurbish the six doors, they soon realized in talking to experts “they’re almost too far gone,” so the process to repair water damage and other problems would be costly and might not even be a workable or permanent solution.

The county commissioners instead asked for bids to replace the entrance, and they’re expected during today’s 10 a.m. voting meeting to approve a $198,600 contract with STONEMILE Group LLC of Cecil Township to install new front doors to the courthouse.

“I thought it would be considerably more than that,” commission Chairman Nick Sherman said. “This isn’t putting up a pre-fit door on a (newly constructed) home. These are doors that are (more than a hundred) years old … that have to be fixed. We were crunching the numbers to fix them now versus just tearing the Band-Aid off (and replacing them) so they would look historically accurate.”

The process has been spearheaded by county officials wanting to reopen the front entrance, which has been closed since late 2019 after the portico underwent reconstruction and then remained closed to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. The streamlined security for the sheriff’s department having just one entrance to oversee on West Cherry Alley also made it more efficient. But now plans are in the works to reopen the South Main Street entrance with an enhanced security screening area, which will once again give the public a chance to walk through the courthouse’s front doors.

“That’s the Taj Mahal of Washington County,” Sherman said of the courthouse and the need to reopen its main entrance. “It’s something we’re very proud of. It’s one of the most beautiful courthouses in the country, and we’re happy with it.”

But it wasn’t easy considering the ornate nature of the six doors that are 10 feet tall and four feet wide. One particular quirk is that the middle set of doors are now cut at the top because they originally opened inward, but emergency exit regulations have changed over the years, forcing them to be physically altered so they could open outward.

“We wanted something identical or very similar to what it looks like, the feel, everything like that,” Welsh said. “It’s been quite the undertaking.”

Welsh said building and grounds worked diligently over the past five years looking for solutions, and he also praised the county’s purchasing department for putting together the unique specs for the project and being able to get a bid that was acceptable for the commissioners. While the cost might seem high, county officials think it will be a welcome improvement to the courthouse as they work to reopen the front entrance, hopefully later this fall.

“Nothing with this is cheap by any means,” Welsh said. “So the due diligence has been done to recreate what we have up there now.”