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Twelve color
prints on sturdy 11 X 17 stock of the most requested courthouse
paintings
from Bill Morgan's book, "Old Friends: Great Texas
Courthouses."
As one critic put it, Bill Morgan is
"to Texas courthouses what Claude Monet is to water lilies." And these are the
best of Morgan's best -- courthouses voted by a panel of 59 people whose
appreciation of Texas' halls of justice was so strong that they traveled the
entire state to explore and photograph the courthouses of all 254 counties.
These 12 paintings are among 71 included, with the complete poll, in the book.
Bring the legacy and beauty of our state's past to your OFFICE, LOBBY,
CONFERENCE ROOM, DEN, CLUB, SCHOOL.
A holiday or anytime gift for
family, friends and business associates. It'll help 'em speak more fluent
Texan.
CLICK ON THE
IMAGES
If you'll click on each image below, you'll get a larger
reproduction of each building, plus some of Bill's most vivid memories of
visiting our landmark courthouses.
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1. Ellis
County - This courthouse had a couple of price tags.
It cost Ellis County residents $175,000 and it cost the county commissioners
their jobs. With the cash crop, cotton, selling for ten cents a bale, the
frugal farmers of those blacklands didn't cotton to a building budget equal to
the price of 1.75 million bales. They voted all the 'aye' votes out of office
in the next election. The citizens didn't figure on James Riely Gordon's magic
touch with stone and mortar. As the courthouse began taking shape, everyone
began taking notice. By the time Gordon's Richardsonian Romanesque Revival
building opened in 1896, all was forgiven. All the defeated commissioners ran
again and all were elected. If they didn't live happily ever after, at least
they lived with job security. |
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2. Coryell
County - You could argue that there ain't no
"Justice" at the Gatesville courthouse and you could be right. A classic Second
Empire building with strong Romanesque Revival touches, Wesley Clarke Dodson's
1897 courthouse cost $73,694.69. It might have been a few bucks more if the
statues of "Justice" atop the roof wore the traditional blindfolds. So why have
they stood there, eyes wide open, all this time? One theory has it that the
commissioners' premise was that "Justice is never sightless, but rather
all-seeing, all-knowing." A practical theory is that statues wearing masks cost
a few bucks more, so commissioners ordered the cheaper ones and called them
"Justice." |
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3. Tarrant
County - This is a rare case of voters throwing out
the rascals because they saved money. In 1893, voters overwhelmingly passed a
$500,000 bond issue to replace their small, but crumbling, courthouse.
Estimates for the final plan by Missouri architects Louis Curtiss and Frederick
Gunn brought a pleasant surprise: a $350,000 price tag. That was a saving of
$150,000 under the bond election. Then cost overruns pushed the final bill up
to $420,000 and every commissioner lost in the next election. All because they
saved $80,000. |
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4. Wise
County - Rumors of a bribery scandal one county to
the east landed a memorable landmark in Decatur. Confusing? You bet. In 1895
Denton County commissioners, having already agreed on a course of action, met
to go through the formality of awarding the design contract to James Riely
Gordon. Then one commissioner reported that a third party had offered him a
bribe to vote for Gordon. The contract went instead to Gordon's former mentor
and current rival, Wesley Clarke Dodson. Gordon demanded an investigation and
sued Denton County for $3,325 in fees. He lost that one, too, so he took his
design 30 miles west and built Wise County's showplace that cost $110,000,
presumably without any bribery fees. |
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5. Denton
County - You read the most interesting courthouse
twist in the Wise County tale above, but did you hear the one about Denton's
other squabbles? A grand jury deemed the old courthouse unsafe in 1894, a
couple of months before lightning hit it another crippling blow. County
officials got nothing in the way of a consensus on whether to shore up the old
courthouse or start over. So they followed the consensus and did nothing.
Almost six months after the grand jury ruling, and after county employees
petitioned for relief from a collapsing courthouse, commissioners accepted
Wesley Clarke Dodson's design. Like the Coryell courthouse, Denton's Second
Empire building incorporated Romanesque Revival touches. Of course, two
commissioners lost their jobs in the next election because of their
votes. |
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6. Gonzales
County - Mysteries! That's a bonus the imposing 1896
courthouse gave Gonzales's conservative (read tight) voters. Its architect
remained anonymous for almost a century. The folks didn't see a need for a new
courthouse after the first one burned in 1893 and they sure didn't see the need
of hiring some high-priced architect to design it. So officials convinced Otto
Krueger, the contractor, to play like he was making it up as he went along. In
1921 a man sentenced to death vowed that he would break the courthouse clock.
It quit running after he quit breathing. In the 1990s, evidence was uncovered
to prove that James Riely Gordon designed the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival
courthouse and slipped the plans to Krueger. The clock? A string of repairmen
gave it their best shots without success and moved on. |
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7. Shackleford
County - What's a courthouse without a square, not
to mention restrooms? Albany has both answers. J.E. Flanders designed the
Second Empire building in 1883 at a cost estimate of $24,000. Strikes and
weather delays brought it in at $68,000. There was surprisingly little
grumbling as the courthouse became the center of a bustling commercial
district. Then the railroad came to town and - oops! - built the depot a couple
of blocks up the street. Merchants quickly followed, leaving the courthouse
dry, if not particularly high. The land around the courthouse was soon
converted into residential lots and families still make their homes around the
courthouse. Commissioners stipulated to Flanders that they had no use for
restrooms. |
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8. Caldwell
County - Today's idyllic Lockhart once rivaled Dodge
City as blood-letting capital of the Wild West. The town grew up near the site
of one of the bloodiest Indian fights in Texas history, the Battle of Plum
Creek that ended Comanche raids in Central Texas. By the time that the $65,000
Second Empire masterpiece was completed in 1893, the county had the reputation
of a shooting gallery. Reminiscences of residents of the time tell of almost
daily shootings, stabbings, fighting, boozing, just all-around ornery behavior.
So where were the cops? Keeping up the town's reputation. In a shoot-out on the
courthouse steps, the county sheriff killed the town constable. |
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9. Victoria
County - Hey, an upbeat courthouse birthing story
and about time, right? They laid the cornerstone of one of the first of
architect James Riely Gordon's Richardsonian Romanesque Revival monuments on
June 1, 1892. Gordon wasn't yet 30 years old at the time. But what a party he
generated-a crowd of 7,000 from all over South Texas showed up to celebrate.
They ate 32 barbecued cows, hogs and sheep, 1,400 loaves of bread, 100 pounds
of coffee and a big barrel of pickles. |
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10. Bexar
County - Another James Riely Gordon monument, also
designed before the wunderkind turned 30. Gordon and partner D.E. Laub added a
unique feature: the building's long vertical lines lent themselves to expansion
as easily as a train adds another car. Additions in 1914-15 and 1926-27
stretched the courthouse to almost 400 feet. Another interesting point: in 1989
District Attorney Fred Rodriguez left his office to address a civic group on
how to burglar-proof their automobiles. When he got to the county officials'
parking lot across the street, his car was missing. The DA noted that the
pilfered vehicle had recently been equipped with an alarm system. |
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11. Parker
County - Talk about controversy. The biggest one
surrounding the $55,555 Second Empire building designed by the venerable Wesley
Clarke Dodson's firm of Dodson and Dudley and completed in 1885 turned on the
clock. A bloc of farmers stomped their feet and dug in their heels at the idea
of putting four clock faces on the building's tall, graceful tower. One clock
face was enough. Their argument: if anybody needed a courthouse clock to tell
the time, they could walk around to the front of the building. Artistic
considerations won out and now you can tell the time from most points in
Weatherford |
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12. Hood
County - The high-visibility centerpiece of
Granbury's tourist magnet has been called Wesley Clarke Dodson's finest Second
Empire design. Not by folks in Coryell, Denton, Hill, Lampasas and Parker
counties, of course. They think they have Dodson's best work. What none of them
can claim, though, is the nation's first presidential assassination theory.
John St. Helen showed up in Granbury after Abraham Lincoln was killed by the
actor John Wilkes Booth. Some folks thought St. Helen was eccentric, others
figured he was nuts. At one point, convinced that he was dying, St. Helen
called in a priest and confessed that he was Johnny Booth and had killed the
president. He said the murder weapon could be found in his house in Granbury. A
quick search uncovered a .41 caliber derringer wrapped in a newspaper account
of the assassination. One problem: St. Helen didn't die. He recovered and
quickly skipped town. Fortunately, Dodson's $40,000 courthouse stayed around to
wow visitors. |
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1998
Calendar - Contains the histories and paintings of
13 landmark Texas courthouses and their counties. Featured counties are:
Atascosa, Comal, Deaf Smith, Donley, Eastland, Jim Wells, Johnson, Lamar,
Maverick, Mason, Montague, Navarro and Trinity. Included are accounts of the
architects whose talents left a unique legacy of form and substance.
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1999
Calendar - The final edition of the Great Texas
Courthouses Calendar series looks at the lively histories of 13 Texas counties
and paintings of their landmark courthouses. The featured counties are: Erath,
Franklin, Gray, Irion, Jefferson, Jones, Potter, Presidio, San Saba, Stephens,
Tom Green, Webb and Wise. |
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