BRUTALIST

Preservationists Try to Save ‘World’s Ugliest Courthouse’

The Otto Stark-designed building in Joliet, Illinois, has been slated for demolition since November 2020.

Locals call it “the world’s ugliest courthouse”—and they want to save it from the wrecking ball. The vacant Will County Courthouse in Joliet, Illinois, has been slated for demolition since November 2020, but preservationists are calling for it to be redeveloped intact, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. A brutalist structure designed by Otto Stark, the courthouse is a concrete block that squats on 45-degree-angled buttresses. “It’s a striking building—a polarizing building,” Greg Peerbolte, chief executive officer of the Joliet Area Historical Museum, told the newspaper. “We all feel in our group that these are reasons to preserve it, not to send it to a landfill.”