A Place for Portraits
County looks for new home for displaced paintings

By Scott Nicholson

Watauga County had a closetful of strangers on its hands during courthouse renovations of the last two years, but now the dust is settling on their new homes.

Maj. Harvey Bingham was also a local attorney after the Civil War. Photo by Scott Nicholson

The main county courtroom in Boone had featured portraits of a number of people, many of them prominent judges, politicians or attorneys. But a few of the faces were unrecognized, leaving county officials scratching their heads in wondering how they ended up on the walls of the courtroom.

During renovation of the main courtroom and several other county offices, the portraits were stored away, and when work was complete, the general consensus was that the new portraits shouldn’t be hung on the new paneling. That left the county to decide what to do with the portraits.

The county commissioners recently discussed the issue, including the standards by which a portrait merited public display. Commissioner Jim Deal, who said there had once been few attorneys in town, noted there were now 40 or 50 and so the distinction wasn’t as rare. He also noted there had never been a formal policy on whose portrait could hang in the courtroom. “People would just come in and put up a picture of Uncle Clyde,” he said.

The commissioners also learned that some of the portraits were of unknown people and origins, leading the county’s maintenance department on a search for clues. Maintenance director Robert Marsh finally rounded up all the names after a couple of weeks of research and some help from locals.

The portraits range from pre-Civil War figures to recent court personnel. Wanda Howell, the Clerk of Superior Court, said she’d asked for the portrait of her first employer, John T. Bingham, who was Clerk of Court from 1974 to 1992. She said she’d like Bingham’s portrait to hang in the clerk’s office, even if it were later moved to the first-floor courtroom.

Other portraits include Leonida Leander “L.L.” Greene, Civil War major and attorney Harvey Bingham, J.E. “Peck” Holshouser and a number of local judges. Marsh is compiling a full list of the 20 or so portraits to help an appointed committee make a decision on their fate.

The commissioners asked staff to develop a policy for eligibility on having a portrait displayed on county property, with the commissioners making the final decisions. The commissioners had discussed hanging the portraits in the first-floor, smaller courtroom, which had also undergone renovations.

As proposed, the policy would allow the local bar association, historical society, community groups or educational organizations to petition the commissions for placement of portraits, pictures or memorabilia. Under the proposal, the commissioners also have the authority to remove any portraits or memorabilia for any reason.