The Courthouse Plan and Its Architect. The design of the Fairfax County Courthouse followed the Virginia tradition that the seats of civil government should be designed with dignity as well as adequacy for their function.[139] Consequently, the courthouse building, which in other respects was a plain rectangular two-story brick structure, departed from strict utilitarian design with its open arcade on the ground floor front, and its cupola in the center of the roof, serving as a base for the flag pole and housing the bell which was used to announce the convening of court.
The advantages of the two-story building for innovations in design and decoration were even more evident with respect to the interior. Entered through the front door which opened into the arcade, the courtroom gave the same impression of vaulted space that is associated with the nave of a church.[140] The space over the arcade on the second floor was enclosed, and presumably used as the jury room. This room was entered from a balcony located across the front of the building (the back of the court chamber) and along each side of the building. At the front of the chamber (as it appeared in the late nineteenth century) was a raised bench, and directly to the left of the judge's seat was a doorway leading into a pair of rooms used by the Court.
No descriptions of the interior of the courtroom as it appeared in the early part of the nineteenth century have been found; but it is probably that the business of the court was transacted, as it had been since early colonial times, at a large table, centered in the main chamber of the courthouse and spacious enough to seat the justices of the County Court and the sheriff, if the business of the day concerned him. One or more separate tables customarily were provided for the clerk of the court and those of his staff who attended the court session. It was also customary to separate the portion of the courtroom occupied by the Court from that occupied by the public, and this was accomplished by installation of a wooden railing or partition. Fireplaces heated the courtroom chamber and a second-floor fireplace heated the jury room above the open arcade. Details of the plastering and woodwork, the lighting fixtures and other hardware are not known, yet it seems certain they must have been of good taste and design, for their selection was in accordance with a plan prepared by James Wren, the designer of The Falls Church, Christ Church in Alexandria, and probably Pohick Church.
Although James Wren's name appears frequently in the public records of Fairfax County during the eighteenth century, his principal legacy was the architecture he designed and helped to build. In the 1760's references to him are found throughout the Vestry Books of Truro Parish and Fairfax Parish.[141] In 1763 he prepared the plans for construction of The Falls Church, which formed the nucleus of the village which grew up around it. In 1767 he designed the plans for Christ Church in Alexandria. Wren and William Weit were each paid forty shillings in 1769 for plans furnished to the vestry, for Pohick Church.[142] He had, through design of these and other structures, earned a reputation as the foremost builder and designer of buildings in his locality[143]—a reputation attested to by numerous contracts, recorded in the Fairfax County Court Order Books, under which young men were apprenticed to him to learn the "trade sciences or occupation of a Carpenter and Joiner."
According to Melvin Lee Steadman's genealogy of the Wren family,[144] James Wren was born in King George County about 1728, the son of John Wren and Ann Turner Wren. He learned his trade of carpentry and joining there, and about 1755 he moved to Truro Parish, Fairfax County. The first reference to James Wren in the land records of Fairfax County is found in a deed dated June 15, 1756 in which one James Scott conveyed to Wren a tract of 200 acres on which Wren was then living. Ultimately, Wren built a home, now called "Long View," adjacent to the present city of Falls Church, and assembled a substantial plantation, known as "Winter Hill," now within Falls Church City. He also operated, at Winter Hill, "Colo. Wren's Tavern."
James Wren served as a justice of the County Court. He was a trustee of the Town of Turberville which in 1798 was laid off on land near the Little Falls of the Potomac but never fulfilled the hopes of its promoters. Following his military service in the Revolutionary War he held various offices in the County government, including that of sheriff and commissioner of the tax. He acquired extensive landholdings in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties. James Wren was married three times; first, in 1753, to Catherine Brent of Overwharton Parish (Aquia Church); next, about 1771–74 to Valinda Wade, and last, to Sarah Jones of Alexandria in 1804. He died in 1815 and was buried at Long View.[145]
The architecture which James Wren created for the courthouse—as well as his churches and the numerous private buildings he designed and built under contract or for his friends—reflect the general level to which that art had advanced in colonial Virginia. The styles were adapted from prototypes in England.[146] Innovations which were made in adapting these styles to American use were, in most instances, attributable to the differences in building materials and the types of skilled labor which were available to the American builder.
The Origin of the Courthouse Design. The architectural design which James Wren selected for the Fairfax County Courthouse utilized several features which already were familiar hallmarks of public buildings in colonial Virginia, and in particular the colonial capitol at Williamsburg—probably the most impressive public building in Virginia at that time. The use of brick as building material, the use of two stories, topped by a cupola, and, most strikingly, the use of arches, all combined to suggest the influence of this capitol building on the courthouse design.[147] The courthouse was far from being a copy of the capitol and Wren added to these familiar features several new ones that made the courthouse an architectural innovation in its own right. When it was completed in 1800, the Fairfax County Courthouse was the first example of a new design which architectural historians have called "the town hall style,"[148] and have traced to English town halls of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like the Fairfax County Courthouse, these town halls were two-story brick or stone buildings which presented to their front a gable-end, ground-floor arcade (or piazza) covering the main opening onto the street, an entrance set into the end wall, and, frequently, a cupola. The town halls of Blandford in Dorset (1734), and Amersham in Buckinghamshire (1682) illustrate these features with variations of details.
No documentary evidence has been found to show how James Wren evolved his design for the Fairfax County Courthouse; but it seems probable that he knew of this style that was enjoying current popularity in England, and that John Bogue, the "undertaker" who built the courthouse, was familiar with the methods of constructing such buildings, for Bogue had just come to America from England in 1795.
While the similarity of geometric and structural exterior design strongly suggests that the Fairfax County Courthouse had its architectural ancestry in the English town halls of that period, the analogy is weaker when functions are compared. The courthouse for Fairfax County was designed and used entirely as the seat of local government. The commercial activity that was attracted to the courthouse site on "court days" enjoyed no special privileges or facilities in the building. In contrast, town halls in eighteenth century England often served the dual purpose of providing a facility for transaction of public business and carrying on the commerce of the community. The style of the English town halls provided space in the open arcade of the ground floor to house a farmers' and tradesmen's market, and space in the second floor chamber for the town council to meet and do its work.[149]