Joseph T. Smitherman Historic Building, Local museum and former school building in Selma, United States.

The Joseph T. Smitherman Historic Building is a three-story red brick Greek Revival structure in Selma, Alabama. Its seven-bay facade features a central tetrastyle portico with monumental Ionic columns, a pediment, and wrought-iron balconies with an open diamond pattern. It now houses the Vaughan-Smitherman Museum.

The Selma Fraternal Lodge No. 27 of the Free and Accepted Masons completed the building in 1847 at a cost of $15,000, and it opened in October 1848 as the Central Masonic Institute, a school for orphans and children of indigent Masons. The mortgage was lost within a few years. It then served as a Confederate hospital, survived the Battle of Selma, and briefly housed a Freedman's Bureau hospital. Local civic leaders bought it to bring the Dallas County seat from Cahaba to Selma, which succeeded in 1866; it was the courthouse until 1902.

The Vaughan-Smitherman Museum occupies the building, with the first floor holding Civil War items and documents relating to slavery, and the second floor given to a political collection. The third floor is arranged as a hospital ward recalling the years of Vaughan Memorial Hospital. Mid-19th-century furniture, Native American artifacts, meeting rooms and parlors fill out the rest.

The museum is located on Lauderdale Street and is easy to reach on foot when walking through downtown Selma. Plan to spend a couple of hours to comfortably browse through the three floors and their different collections.

The building features a recreation of a 19th-century hospital ward that shows visitors how medical care was organized and delivered during that era. This reconstruction provides a hands-on understanding of the conditions and practices of the time.