THE COURTHOUSES
OF AUSTIN COUNTY
By Terry
Jeanson
According to the Texas Historical Commission County Atlas at http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/shell-county.htm,
Austin County
has had five courthouses, not counting the first courthouse that
was built in San
Felipe de Austin in 1837, which was the first county seat of
Austin County.
Founded in 1824 by Stephen F. Austin, San
Felipe de Austin was evacuated and burned on March 30, 1836
in response to the news of the advancing Mexican Army during the
Texas Revolution. Austin
County was organized in 1837 and San
Felipe de Austin was rebuilt near the site of the previous settlement.
The name of the town was officially changed to San
Felipe in 1840. San
Felipe declined during the 1840s and a vote in 1846 relocated
the county seat to Bellville which
was near the center of the county.
Bellville was named for Thomas
B. Bell, one of the group of settlers known as the “Old Three Hundred,”
who were brought to Texas by Stephen F. Austin. Bell settled in
the area of present day Bellville
in 1838. He and his brother James donated land for a townsite when
the county seat was relocated from San
Felipe and Bellville was surveyed
and laid out in 1848. The county’s second courthouse was built the
same year. It was a temporary one-story log courthouse built by
Benjamin L. Cheek and was accepted by the county on August 26, 1848.
This structure was replaced in 1850 by the county’s third courthouse,
constructed by Sam Shelburne. It was a one-story, wood frame building
with a shed roofed porch. The interior of this courthouse contained
a central courtroom with two offices on each side. The county’s
fourth courthouse was constructed five years later. Built by Philip
M. Cuny, it was completed on November 20, 1855. It was originally
planned to be built next to the 1850 courthouse, but that building
was sold at auction and moved. The 1855 courthouse was a two-story
brick building with exterior columns and stairs which led to the
jury and court rooms on the second floor. The first floor was devoted
to county offices. An 1875 description of the building mentions
an iron portico, part of which may have been salvaged and reused
later. In 1877, an addition was built onto the 1855 courthouse and
a new safe was installed. An iron veranda was added in 1880.
By 1887, construction was underway on the county’s fifth courthouse,
which would be the grandest yet. The county hired Houston
architect Eugene
T. Heiner to design the building and Henry Kane of Gonzales,
TX was the contractor. Upon seeing the 1855 courthouse in 1884,
Heiner was recorded as observing that the building was "liable to
fall at almost any moment." The 1887 brick courthouse was designed
in the Second Empire style which Heiner would use for similar looking
courthouses in Falls and Walker counties (see Falls
County Courthouse & Walker
County Courthouse), built around the same time. The courthouse
was three stories with a central clock tower and a Mansard roof
with pedimented cupolas over the entrances on each side. The interior
had a crossing hallway plan with a long axis along the east-west
corridor. The upstairs courtroom stretched all the way across the
second floor running north and south. This building served the county
until it was destroyed by fire on April 5, 1960 (See: The
Most Remembered Courthouse in Texas: Austin County's 1888 Courthouse
in Bellville.) All that remains is the clock tower bell and
the cornerstone which rest on top of some of the courthouse’s original
bricks, displayed in a red brick planter at the south entrance of
the current courthouse.
The county’s current courthouse is the sixth for Austin
County. Built in 1960-61, it was designed by Fort
Worth architect Wyatt Cephas Hedrick. Hedrick joined the prominent
Fort Worth architectural
firm of Sanguinet and Staats in 1921 before starting his own firm
in 1925 and buying out the remaining interest in Sanguinet and Staats
the following year. Hedrick’s practice was active across the United
States from the 1920s through the 1950s and was at one time considered
the country’s third largest architectural firm. Hedrick’s popular
Art-Deco and Art-Moderne designs evolved into the ultra-modern by
the late 1940s and 1950s as seen in the Texas courthouses of Coke,
Motley and Yoakum counties. The 1960-61 courthouse in Bellville,
the last courthouse he designed before his death in 1964, is a windowless
block of granite and concrete with a two-story block on top of and
overlapping a smaller one-story block. There is a smaller block
on the roof and a sunken basement. County offices occupy the first
floor and the district courtroom spans the north end of the second
floor. The courthouse sits in the center of the city square, surrounded
by many older buildings. This modern courthouse is often referred
to as one of the ugliest in Texas, especially considering the beautiful
structure that it replaced, but it freezes in time the period in
which it was built and dutifully continues to serve the county today.
- Terry
Jeanson
Sources: Courthouse
information from the Texas Historical Commission County Atlas at
http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/shell-county.htm, Historical information
and information on Wyatt C. Hedrick from the Handbook of Texas Online.
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