Built for Justice, Borrowed for Fiction
The Volusia County Historic Courthouse inspired Enchanted Springs’ most visible landmark: the courthouse that overlooks Courthouse Square. You’ll find it mentioned in several Enchanted Antique Shop stories.
Sadly, there’s no town square here in real life, so I had to use my imagination to give Enchanted Springs the central gathering spot it deserves. I borrowed the town square from Bentonville, Arkansas, and then I plopped the World’s Fair Fountain from Stetson University right in the middle.
Ah, the power to create worlds simply by pushing a few buttons on my keyboard: it’s heady stuff.
While it lacks a parklike setting, the historic Volusia County Courthouse really is beautiful. Opened in 1929, it has a massive copper dome, green with the patina of age. Its old clock tower still chimes the hours. Every now and then, I can hear it from my house, marking the passage of time as another day slips quietly into history.
Walk up the steps and through the columns at the entrance, and you’ll feel like you’re stepping into a twentieth-century temple of justice. The courthouse is a neoclassical building with two main entrances, a feature architects call a double façade. The south entrance faces New York Avenue, and the north entrance faces Indiana Avenue.
Inside, you’ll find marble staircases, oil paintings that highlight great moments in Florida history, and stained-glass windows that filter light down from the overhead dome.
That’s the fun of fiction: you can rearrange the world to suit the story, but some landmarks are already perfect when you find them.