New London — Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers addressed about 100 members of the legal community Wednesday at a celebration of the recently renovated 1784 courthouse on Huntington Street.

The Colonial-style building at the top of State Street is one of the country's oldest continuously used courthouses.

"In so many ways, this courthouse is more than just a building," Rogers said. "It represents our democracy and the grit and energy of this great nation, city and judicial district."

The renovation of the building included a new slate roof, siding, cupola, trim work and gutters as well as numerous structural repairs. The project, financed with state bond funds, cost approximately $1.6 million.

In September 2012, as crews were finishing the renovation, a contractor who was brazing a pipe sparked a fire that destroyed a portion of the new slate roof. A sprinkler head directly above the fire helped contain it until a fire crew arrived, according to building supervisor John Ondusko.

Emmet L. Cosgrove, administrative judge for the New London Judicial District, invited members of the New London Fire Department to the ceremony and thanked them "for saving this beautiful building." A few city officials and local legislators also attended.

It was not the first time a fire threatened a courthouse in the city. The town's courthouse on The Parade at the bottom of State Street was torched in 1781 by soldiers fighting under Gen. Benedict Arnold, according to a history of the courthouse compiled for the building's bicentennial celebration in 1984 by The Day's editorial page editor, Kenneth Grube, and Alma C. Weis, who operated the Tail of the Whale Museum down Huntington Street from the courthouse.

After the war, residents realized the need for a new courthouse. Joseph Coit, a Norwich businessman, deeded the land to the county in May 1784. New London's first mayor, Richard Law, led the efforts to build the courthouse. A Lebanon carpenter named Isaac Fitch designed the Colonial-style building with Georgian influences. Construction was not completed until 1814.

"Much like other public buildings of its time, it is capped by a cupola in the center of its ridgepole," says the Grube/Weis publication. "It bears a striking likeness to pictures of Connecticut's very first State House, built in 1719."

Exterior architectural features include a Palladian window above the entrance and fluted pilasters on either side of the door and corners of the second floor. Wooden keystones decorate the areas above the entrance and the first-floor windows and are repeated in the arches, window and cupola.

The building has served many purposes in the past two centuries, including as a makeshift hospital during a yellow fever outbreak in 1798 and as a church meeting house, according to Cosgrove.

Revolutionary War Gen. Marquis de Lafayette and statesman Daniel Webster spoke at the courthouse and in 1860, publisher Horace Greeley campaigned there on behalf of Abraham Lincoln's Republic ticket, according to Cosgrove.

"For all of these fascinating events, this has always been primarily a courthouse," Cosgrove said.

The room known as "Courtroom 1" and the court's library were added on to the back of the courthouse in 1910, according to Cosgrove.

The newer section of the courthouse, attached to the 1784 building via a catwalk, was constructed in 1982.

At the end of the ceremony, Cosgrove encouraged the assembly to leave by the original front door that overlooks State Street, walking out "as the people of New London County did in the 1800s," and imagining the changes the building would see during the next century.

k.florin@theday.com