The rogues having been thus placed under supervision, it became necessary to have a proper place for the administration of justice to them. In pursuance of this idea a Court House was erected in the centre of a large square now bounded by Fifth, Seventh, Market and Jefferson Streets. This building was made of brick after a plan drawn by John Gwathmey and was finished in 1811. The precise site of the house is now occupied by a part of the present Jail. It fronted on Sixth Street, and consisted of a main building with two wings attached. In front of the main building was a lofty Ionic portico, supported by four columns. Long before this building was removed, these columns, which were built of wood, gave convincing and thoroughly American proof that they had been consigned to other uses than those intended by their projectors. Notwithstanding their great size, the attacks made upon them by the _pen-knives_ of the attacheés of the court had actually severed one of them, and the wood within convenient reach of a man's hand which remained in the other three, would hardly have served for one day's good _whittling_. This edifice was, in its earlier days, the handsomest of its kind in the western country. It was pulled down in 1836, in order to make room for the new structure undertaken, but never completed, in 1837. This sublime monument of the city's folly, was begun on a scale of unexampled magnificence, and had it been possible to complete it, would have been one of the most beautiful buildings in the West. It still stands an almost mouldering ruin, its half-finished grandeur constantly recalling the parable of the foolish man who "began to build and was not able to finish." We come now to notice an event of vital importance, not only to Louisville, but to the whole West. This was the commencement of Steam Navigation on the western rivers. In October of 1811, Fulton's steamboat called the "New Orleans," intended to run from the port of that name to Natchez, left Pittsburg for its point of destination. At this time there were but two steamboats on this continent; these were the North River and The Clermont, and they were occupied on the Hudson River. The New Orleans on her first trip took neither freight nor passengers. Her inmates "were Mr. Roosevelt, an associate of Fulton, with his wife and family, Mr. Baker, the engineer, Andrew Jack, the pilot, and six hands with a few domestics." Her landing at Louisville is thus described in Latrobe's Rambler in America.