Recent tours of the famed Old Court House Museum have included one not-so-majestic feature: Water damage has left part of a wall in the upstairs court room cracked, rotting and showing its age.

By the middle of next week, however, work by a local paint crew should again have the room belying its 140 years.

Tuggle Paint Company began work to restore the wall late last week, and has spent this week adding the first coat of paint. The four-man crew hopes to finish the second coat early next week, said owner Jimmy Tuggle.

The original wall was a brick facade plastered over and painted yellow with white piping – a technique popular in the Victorian era – to emphasize the lines between bricks, said museum director Gordon Cotton. Over time, water from a roof leak in a corner of the court room’s south wall had eaten through the plaster and exposed the original brick.

&#8220The roof leaked for so long, that whole corner was deteriorating,” said Tuggle, who painted the room years ago when the wall was restored to its original color. &#8220It was just falling to pieces.”

The roof was replaced last year with grant money from Warren County and the state, Cotton said. He estimated the paint job would cost the Vicksburg and Warren County Historical Society, a private non-profit that has operated the museum about 55 years, about $12,000.

The pale yellow paint is the original color of the wall, Cotton said. It had been given a coat of blue during a renovation, but about 20 years ago was restored to its original shade – a shade painters had to match to blend with intact portions of the wall.

&#8220That’s the hard part, because they’re not painting the other side of the wall, so we had to be very sure the color matched,” said Chad Fazzio, manager of Sherwin-Williams paint on North Frontage Road, whose store supplied 10 gallons for the initial coat and more for a second coat added later this week. &#8220It came out perfect. It looks really good.”

Cotton agreed.

&#8220It looks so great compared to what it did look like,” he said. &#8220It needed it. This is a symbol of Vicksburg if ever there was one.”

The courthouse was at least the second for Warren County and dates to 1860. It stood during the Civil War and was replaced when the the current courthouse, which faces it across Cherry Street, was completed in the 1940s.