PORT TOWNSEND — A $140,000 doorway replacement project that duplicates the once-deteriorating 113-year-old front entryway atop the Jefferson County Courthouse steps is expected to open to the public sometime this week.
The project over the past six months has required periodic closures of the historic courthouse’s main entryway, with visitor traffic being directed to the handicap-accessible north entrance.
County commissioners and Administrator John Fischbach, seeing the much-anticipated doors installed last week, expressed initial satisfaction with the job performed by The Maizefield Co., which has been restoring many of Port Townsend’s historic landmarks since 1978.
Taking job very seriously
Maizefield owner Sebastian Eggert said he and his crew of four took the job very seriously.
Each piece of wood that went into the doors and framework was carefully crafted with an eye for detail.
In fact, each panel is designed to be symmetrically matched left and right, he said.
Even the grain of the wood used in the door panels was designed to be a near-mirror image.
“My grandchildren will be walking through these doors and I didn’t want to hang my head in shame,” Eggert said Friday, admiring his crew’s nearly completed work as it gleamed in the late-morning sunlight.
The longtime Port Townsend resident and businessman said he wanted make a good first impression on those who would be passing through the doors to the courthouse.
Finished in white oak, the doors were made to last indefinitely, Eggert said.
The framework includes narrow vertical window panels on each side of the door frame.
The original frame was made of redwood and white oak, but Eggert said even that had seriously deteriorated during a century of sunshine, wind and rain beating on it.
The motion-detecting system, with its wiring and operating mechanism neatly hidden in a panel above the doors, will automatically slide the two doors open for courthouse visitors.
The Romanesque-style courthouse was designed by Seattle architect W. A. Ritchie, and built at an estimated cost of $150,000 in 1892.
