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Texas
| Buildings
| Courthouses
The
Ugliest Courthouse in Texasby
Johnny Stucco
Inside a modern monster,
a 19th Century beauty is crying to come out. |
| Titus
County has technically had five courthouses. Four of them built prior to 1870.
The fifth (and current) courthouse dates from 1895, although you'd never know
it. Looking like a cross between the Battleship Texas and and a geometrically-challenged
Mexican pyramid, the Titus County Courthouse is one you'll never forget. |
The
1895 Titus County courthouse today
Photo courtesy Terry
Jeanson, December 2006 |
Sometimes,
facts need facing. Some buildings are just plain ugly. To borrow a phrase from
Susan DuQuesnay Bankston, some buildings are so ugly "they'll wrinkle your pants
if you walk in front of them." The current Titus County Courthouse is one of these.
Calling it "The Ugliest Courthouse in Texas" is not done to be cruel - nor is
it just our opinion. The words spring involuntarily from the lips of most first-time
viewers. We've even heard it from several Titus Countians, and in fact, its ugliness
is sometimes bragged about.
Why are we writing about it? For one thing
it's three hours to quitting time and for another, people love an ugly-duckling
story (even if it's in reverse).
The building started out as a rather
above-average building when it was first built in 1895. If you think of courthouses
as schoolgirls, then the 1895 courthouse was the girl next door. Pretty, but not
fancy. It was a composite of typical contemporary designs. It wasn't a "wedding-cake"
courthouse and it wasn't ostentatious. |
| The
1895 design
Postcard circa 1909, courtesy THC |
The
primary purpose of a courthouse isn't to look good. It's to provide a place for
justice to be administered and to keep juries out of the rain. And while we're
on the subject of inclement weather, we'd like to say that in Texas, it was a
major factor in courthouse design. After the first six or eight towers were blown
off their moorings, some counties got smart and voluntarily dismantled them before
disaster struck. By the time the Great Depression made it's appearance, many courthouses
in Texas had already been altered to the Moderne style - which was in vogue at
the time. Efficient and modern streamlining = good. Ornamentation and decoration
= bad. The Federal Government needed to create make-work projects and what better
place to start a make-work project than in the center of town?
All across
Texas Beaux-arts and Victorian masterpieces were dismantled or destroyed to make
way for the clean, sleek lines of Moderne and Art Deco. Here in Titus County,
however, the courthouse wasn't razed. County commissioners figured it was easier
and less costly to remove just enough of the old so it could be covered by the
new. |
|
Titus County Courthouse after the 1940 remodeling
Photo courtesy TXDoT,
1940 |
| Another
view of the Titus County Courthouse in the 1940s
Photo courtesy THC
|
| In
1940 the courthouse received the first of several remodelings. It was new and
shiny and people just knew that they would get used to it - given enough time.
|
| Titus
County Courthouse and square in the 1940s
Postcard courtesy rootsweb.com/
%7Etxpstcrd/ |
| Then,
in the early 1960s, when the country was in the throes of "urban renewal" fever,
another remodeling took place. This nearly windowless design was completed by
1962 and had all the success of an operation performed to correct bad plastic
surgery. A third remodeling was done in 1990 and by then this architectural Frankenstein
was gaining a statewide reputation. |
| Titus
County Courthouse after the 1962 remodeling
Photo circa 1965, courtesy
THC |
| Oscar
Wilde once said "The one thing worse than being talked about - is not being talked
about" and so we're happy that Titus County has its distinctive landmark. Perhaps
the next time a make-work project is needed, County Commissioners can peel off
the layers of progress and reveal a hardly-used beauty. |
|
The current Ector County Courthouse encasing the 1938 courthouse
Postcard
courtesy THC |
The
second ugliest courthouse in Texas? Our survey isn't complete, but according
to exit polls, the Ector
County Courthouse of Odessa is a front-runner.
Coincidentally, it
is another "severely improved building" - an 1938 design encased under a new facade
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© John Troesser |
Titus County
Courthouse UpdateThe
Bell Tower >
by Bob Bowman
("All Things Historical") 11-15-05
"...
The bell will soon ring again across Mount
Pleasant’s
courthouse square.
... After the county’s ill-fated experience with aluminum
siding in the sixties, the metal skin was removed in the 1990s and the building
was restored to its 1940s appearance--much to the relief of everyone.
If you’re interested in buying a brick for the bell tower, get in touch with Claude
Alexander at 903-572-2897." [ more
] | | |
