Mount Sterling Commercial Historic District

Downtown Mount Sterling's historic core covers four full and four partial quarter-blocks around the Brown County Courthouse. Most buildings are two-story red brick commercial structures from the nineteenth century, all Italianate, with cast iron storefront details, recessed entries, arched upper windows and stamped metal cornices. Their similar height and detail give the district a strong visual rhythm. The dominant building is the 1868 courthouse, an H-shaped brick structure with a Roman Doric portico that was rebuilt from the inside after a 1939 fire. The district also holds a 1915 former hardware store now used as the library, and an early twentieth-century Neo-Classical bank. Mount Sterling was chosen as county seat in 1839 after commissioners weighed local donations for public buildings. The district is significant for showing how county seats and courthouse squares developed as commercial centers, and for its sequence of architectural styles between 1868 and 1920. It still serves as the commercial and governmental center of the county.