Present Court House

The present court house in Placentia was built in 1902 to replace the court house built in 1774.

The Architect was William Henry Chuchill This building was considered a general building because it accommodated postal telegraph and customs offices as well as court and jail facilities.

A variation of this court house design was used in other centers. These simple frame buildings included Bonavista (1897-99), Bell Island (1900, demolished ca. 1970), Greenspond (1902, Trinity (1903), St. George's (1903) and Bay Roberts (1903-4, demolished 1960s). All these buildings are follow a similar design concept. Each has a two-sided mansard roof with dormers and fronted by a square, hooded tower. All originally were rectangular and built of wood by local builders. Aside from these similarities, particular buildings were adapted to suit their locations. Bonavista, the first to be constructed, was three stories with a basement. Placentia and Trinity contained three storeys but no basements; however, both buildings had clocks in their towers which were not found in other court houses. Bonavista, Trinity and Placentia Court Houses are similar in design and one report states that they were built by the contractors from Bonavista, Ronald Strathie, Robert Tucker and George Verge. St. George's and Greenspond had only two storeys. Both of them similar in scale than the Bonavista building, although St. George's Court House was larger than the one in Greespond.

All existing standard design court houses seem to have accommodated the same functions: jailer's residence, jail, postal telegraph office, customs office and court room. Magistrate's quarters were also provided. The court houses at Bonavista, Placentia and Trinity were subdivided functionally as well as visually by towers in their facades. In each case, the jailer's residence occupied all three storyes to the right of the tower. On the left side, a courtroom stretched to occupy both second and third storeys. Bonavista housed cells in the basement, with magistrate's, postal telegraph and customs offices on the first floor. All of these functions were located on the ground floor in Placentia and Trinity. These court houses seem to have accommodated all provincial functions needed int their area, and therefore were sometimes known as general buildings. The dome was replaced with a square roof on the tower on the Placentia Court House in the 1960s.