Square stories · what the public record says about the square
The square other towns copied
Shelbyville’s block-central courthouse square. See every building on the square
What the public record says
After the 1806 Chickasaw cession, the Tennessee General Assembly in 1809 provided for a new county seat. Four commissioners were to buy 100 acres within two miles of the county centre on the Duck River and reserve a 2-acre public square. Clement Canon bought and donated the 100 acres in 1810; lots were drawn.
The plan that resulted is a block-central courthouse square: four streets (Main and Spring north–south, Depot and Holland east–west) enclose the courthouse and divide nine blocks. The National Register nomination says the plan is unchanged since it was platted in 1810.
It also says — citing geographer Edward T. Price (1968) and the Shelbyville Times-Gazette Sesquicentennial edition (Oct. 7, 1969) — that “the block type central courthouse square of Shelbyville was the first of its type in Tennessee and one that was frequently copied thereafter in other new towns forming in Tennessee and several surrounding states.”
The 1982 historic district covers 42 buildings, dating from the 1870s to about 1930, Gothic Revival to Art Deco. The present Bedford County Courthouse (1935–36) was built from the surviving walls of the 1873 courthouse after the December 1934 fire.
Sources: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Shelbyville Courthouse Square Historic District (82001725) (1982) · Price, Edward T., “The Central Courthouse Square in the American County Seat,” Geographical Review 58:1 (1968), pp. 29–60 (as cited in the nomination) · Shelbyville Times-Gazette Sesquicentennial edition, Oct. 7, 1969 (as cited in the nomination).