historic jackson county truman courthouse/truman courtroom/jackson art museum

This is a historic courthouse building having the oldest foundation for its type west of the Mississippi River. There is an active courtroom and a complete mock up of Harry S Truman's Oval Office. Other sites are in walking distance as well...

To see this courthouse fully you need to go on the free tour, which are conducted at 11:00 am and 2:00 PM. The tour takes about one hour.

A bit of history and quaint little downtown from yesteryear. Sorry I missed the festival in the area which is around labor weekend. Not much going on today when I was there

This building was recently renovated and opened to tour, etc. Love seeing an old time courthouse. I like the authenticity of it.

We didn't plan to visit this historic site but really glad we did.The tour guide (sorry I can't remember her name, we did it on weekend) was excellent and made the time much better than if we toured by ourself. Shame that this fine building is not used for more events and isn't really hyped as much as it should be. We mainly found out about it from the people at the Jail tour (which was the best of our time in Independence visit)

I like structures, especially old ones, and the courthouse is old, Victorian looking, and it has the coolest thing on the ground floor: a handcraft shop that is totally run by senior citizens. They stock it, mind the store, everything. Basically anything that's handmade, that you can fit it in your backseat, they make: knitted stuff, woodcarving, painting; from as long as I can remember(the early 70's), and still going strong.

We wandered into the old Jackson County Courthouse largely because we were told that Truman's courtroom and officer were there and we have a little time to kill before grabbing lunch and presenting our tour tickets at the Truman Home. A couple of sheriffs on duty were only too eager to welcome us, talk about the building and encourage us to look around. Unfortunately, they said, you had to be on a guided tour to see the courtroom and museum. We did want to see the museum, didn't we? Since the choice was 11:00 or 2:00, we opted to hang around, see what we could see on our own, use the restrooms and be there for the 11:00 tour.What a great decision that was. Our tour guide, David Jackson, is the archivist for the Jackson County Historical Society and he was a font of information. His understanding went way beyond the basics about Harry Truman and the Pendergast patronage that brought him into the political realm. He showed us pictures of the courthouse in its various incarnations from log cabin (still in existence about a block away) through a federal style building and Italianate villa/French mansard styles to the current colonial revival structure erected in the 1930s. I loved that he found the corners of the original building at various places in the current one, would lean against them lovingly, and say, "This was the outside corner of the first courthouse--we'd be standing in the shade of a tree it this were 1850."He talked a lot about the restoration project, the effort to keep the atmosphere of the 1930s while upgrading the climate controls to the most modern technology. We visited the original county courtroom on the second floor and admired the restoration and also the eccentric, folk-art portraits of founding fathers. Then we went into the Jackson Museum of Art to see the collection of portraits and prints after genre paintings by George Caleb Bingham (1811-79) who lived in the Bingham-Waggoner Estate for a few years. (Don't miss that, either!) The artwork has been collected by area restaurateurs and place on long-term loan. What a treat! We went from room to room, turning lights on and off. A special and personal experience.The building is a work in progress. As of mid-October 2013, it has been open for about a month. The Jackson County Historic Society will move in completely; the building will be the site of other cultural opportunities.Independence is a marvelous town with much more to do than can be fit into a single day. We had no idea anything was there beyond the Truman Home and the Truman Library and Museum--and the Courthouse was unquestionably our favorite stop in terms of general Independence history.Take a peak at the "architectural window" on the first floor behind which you can see a piece of the original, early 19th century molding. Directly below the window is a phone booth with a phone so antique one can easily imagine someone using it, and asking the telephone operator to place the call.