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The Coffee County Historical Society recently received a $150,000 grant from the Tennessee Historical Commission to make improvements to the entryway of the historic courthouse.

The grant required a 10% match from the county which brings the total funds given to $165,000 for the preservation project.

According to Coffee County Historical Society volunteer Sandra McMullin Bennett, Manchester native Bobby Cooley, the Tennessee Historical Commission’s State Historic Sites Program Coordinator, stopped into the building to check things out and mentioned the idea of a grant.

“When he came through, he told us about this possibility for a grant, and he said we would be absolutely considered for that because of how old this building is,” said Bennett. “We were really happy to hear about that.”

Cooley recently moved back to Manchester with his family and says he immediately thought of the Coffee County Courthouse when the Historical Commission put out a call to find buildings that would be candidates for the grants.

“They’re using it for telling the history of the county,” he says. “It’s not being left alone or pushed aside. It’s still being used for certain court hearings and this grant is ideal for a building like this because it can help draw introspect to the building by doing historic preservation work to it.”

Cooley says that the improvements funded by the grant will encourage more tourism to the building and to the city. He also added that the credit should be given to the Tennessee Historical Commission and not just him specifically.

“The interest on my end and the office’s end is we want to save buildings, and we want to preserve buildings, and this is one that met most of the criteria when we were outlining what the grants needed to be used for,” he added.

The improvements that were specified in the grant focus on the first floor of the building and include replacing the paneling on the walls with plaster and pulling up the current flooring and putting down hardwood which would be more appropriate for the time that the courthouse was built.

“I think it’s probably just the first step because there’s so much that needs to be done,” says Bennett. “As we know, $165,000 doesn’t go as far as we’d like it to, but if you don’t take those first steps, then the second and the third ones don’t come. That’s a really important start, and we’re really excited about it.”