DeKalb County Courthouse: Pillars of the Square

Lyrics

You're standing on the square, and you feel the pull.
It's like all the streets point here, you know?
Past the brunch crowds from Leon's, past the book festival stalls...
There it is. The old anchor. The red brick soul.

I heard the first one smelled of pine logs and raw earth.
Just a simple cabin, back in eighteen twenty-three.
The first of four, right on this very ground.
A simple promise made for a brand new county.
Then came brick, and then another... burned and built again.
Just ghosts of buildings on this same patch of rain.

Red brick on a granite base, holding up the sky.
The old DeKalb County Courthouse, watching all our lives go by.
The clock tower counts the heartbeats, steady, worn, and true.
The pillars of Decatur Square, seeing it all through.

Then came James W. Golucke's Romanesque design.
Eighteen ninety-eight, a statement for the time.
Grand arches, solid stone, built to last the line.
You can almost hear the gavels fall, the pleas and worried sighs.
The clang of that new bell, a sharp and hopeful sound.
This was the center of a world, for miles and miles around.

Red brick on a granite base, holding up the sky.
The old DeKalb County Courthouse, watching all our lives go by.
The clock tower counts the heartbeats, steady, worn, and true.
The pillars of Decatur Square, seeing it all through.

Then nineteen sixty-seven... the hum of something new.
A modern concrete courthouse, with different work to do.
But this old place, it didn't crumble, didn't fade away.
It just learned to hold the stories of every yesterday.
Now the DeKalb History Center... a quiet, steady gaze from its windows.

And I'm still standing on the square, feeling that same pull.
The clock hands keep on turning.
The heart is always full.
Yeah, the heart of this town is always full.