Today the historic Eaton County Courthouse still anchors downtown Charlotte with its high dome, its width girth, and its bright brick elevations.  Imagine the impression this structure made!  If Eaton County residents were familiar with any other large public building, it was probably the newly completed Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.  How proud they must have been to have their own impressive new building!

While the courthouse was massive when compared with other buildings of the same era, the citizens of Eaton County certainly hoped that their community would continue to grow.  Therefore, when they built this building they looked to the future and tried to plan for it as best they could.  This small lobby area is an example of just that planning.  The small set of stairs located here rise up to a partial third level of the building that served for additional storage space.  Over the years, as local government continued to grow, the county began to use the space above to store the county’s growing collection of records.