Jasper County to preserve 100-year-old courthouse blueprints

Hand-drawn blueprints of the Jasper County Courthouse will be preserved for a price much cheaper than initially anticipated.

During the Nov. 5 board of supervisors meeting, maintenance director Adam Sparks said the blueprints are more than 100 years old and are not replaceable. The prints themselves are very delicate and are barely held together with tape. Sparks showed them to supervisors back in August 2023.

Jasper County has two options to preserve the blueprints: 1) Keep the blueprints preserved in a box that would be put away from public view, or 2) Preserve them in a booklet that would then be viewable from somewhere in the courthouse. Sparks said there are about 50 to 75 sheets of blueprints that need preserved.

“People could come in and actually see all the prints that are left,” Sparks said. “So it’s kind of doing the same thing to them it’s just at the end what we’re going to do with them. Put them in a box for people not to see down the road? Or put them in this book that people can view and flip through?”

To prepare for the preservation of the blueprints, Sparks set aside about $20,000 not knowing what it would really cost. But the quotes he received came back between $1,500 to $3,000. Supervisors thought it was well worth it to preserve them and to present them in a way that residents can look at them.

The board of supervisors voted 3-0 to approve the $3,000 preservation of the courthouse blueprints.