Carlinville is a city in Macoupin County, Illinois, United States.As of the 2010 Census, the population was 5,917, and 5,665 at a 2015 estimate. It is the county seat of Macoupin County, and is an outlying part of the Metro-East region of the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area.Carlinville is also the home of Blackburn College, a small college affiliated with the Presbyterian church, and Prairie Farms Dairy.HistoryCarlinville is named for Thomas Carlin, 7th Governor of Illinois, who as a member of the state legislature was instrumental in creating Macoupin County.Carlinville has long been a site of Illinois history, and has played host to many presidential hopefuls via campaign stops at a time in American history when railway routes produced many visits by politicians. Perhaps the largest and most important hallmark of Carlinville's history is its courthouse, the largest built outside of New York City at the time of its erection. Built in 1870 and designed by famous state capitol building architect Elijah E. Myers, the construction of Carlinville's courthouse produced its candidacy for the location of the State Capitol. Locally, it is known as "The Million Dollar Courthouse" due to its cost overruns at the time it was built.In the early 1900s Carlinville became the site of a great many Sears Catalog Homes. An entire neighborhood was constructed of the homes and was funded, in 1918, by Standard Oil of Indiana for its mineworkers in Carlinville, at a cost of approximately 1 million dollars. In gratitude, Sears, Roebuck named one of its house models the "Carlin." Today 149 of the original 156 homes still exist, the largest single repository of Sears Catalog Homes in the United States.
