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Tarrant
County Courthouse
©2007 Bill Morgan. All
rights reserved
TARRANT COUNTY - When I was a lad of 60 this
graceful old building captured my imagination as much as Susan Hayward captured
it when I was a lad of 13. Then, well into the 21st Century I heard another
Tarrant courthouse story for the first time, one that no one who was there will
forget.
A few friends were enjoying a libation or two one afternoon
when everyone quieted down to hear the answer to the rhetorical question posed
by Frank Thrower. As a co-author of the venerated "The Courthouses of Texas
II” with Mavis P. Kelsey Sr. and Donald H. Dyal, Frank has earned the
right to be heard on this topic.
Even without his impressive
credentials, Frank Thrower would have sealed his audience’s undivided
attention with his poser.
"Do you guys know how they turn that iron
roof that light green color?" Frank inquired.
Puzzled looks.
"Horse urine," Frank disclosed, in the manner of a double agent revealing the
location of the plans.
"Did you say horse urine?"
"Right,
horse urine. There's a chemical reaction to horse urine that turns the metal
green," Frank added.
Somebody asked, "So how did they get the horse up
on the roof?"
Somebody else observed, “There's a roof you don't
want to be under if it leaks.”
I didn't fully appreciate the
Tarrant building - not to mention its roof - until I began doing courthouse
paintings almost exclusive of other subjects around 1990. The Tarrant building
is unique among Texas courthouses, as are few of the most memorable ones.
For other one-of-a-kind courthouses, check out the Jefferson County
building in Beaumont, the Atascosa County seat in Jourdanton, the Shelby County
Scottish castle in Center or the old Gillespie courthouse (now the library) in
Fredericksburg. And if the traffic doesn't scare you off, try the Grimes County
courthouse in Anderson where at rush hour you're likely see three or four
pickup trucks.
Few of the old courthouses of Texas are really unique
and so what? This here state is big enough to have similar masterpieces in
Ellis and Wise Counties, in Caldwell and Goliad Counties, in Lee and Comal, in
Fort Bend and Hayes, even in Hill, Hood and Parker Counties. Most of them are
Richardsonian Romanesque Revival (usually with arched doors and windows, heavy
stone exteriors, massive adornments) or Second Empire (symmetrical with domes
at each corner and an imposing clock tower in the middle), so it's to be
expected that they bear some family resemblance.
The Tarrant building
has been compared to the state capitol in Austin, but I don't see it. What I do
see is a Texas original, thanks in small measure to equine metabolism and in
large measure to the architects. Louis Curtiss and Frederick Gunn were a couple
of innovative architects from Missouri. With all those celebrated architects in
Texas during the state's "golden age of courthouse architecture," the Tarrant
County folks hired Missouri architects.
Now, that's unique. Almost as
unique as their building’s green roof.
Buy A
Print
11x17 prints on sturdy stock of the Tarrant County
Courthouse are available on my ordering page. The cost is $20 for the first
print and $16 for additional prints of this, or any of the other 11
courthouses, purchased at the same time. (Add $3 for shipping) |
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