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The
Present Rusk County Courthouse
Date: 1928
Architect: Curtis & Thomas, and A. C. Gentry
Style: Classical Revival style (Texas Renaissance)
Material: Concrete and brick |
The 1928 Rusk
County Courthouse as it appeared in 1939
Photo courtesy TXDoT |
THE
COURTHOUSES OF RUSK COUNTY
by Terry
Jeanson
Although settlement in this area of Texas
began in the early 1830s, Rusk County wasn’t organized until 1843,
cut from Nacogdoches County to the south. It was named after a veteran
of the Texas Revolution, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence
and Texas political leader General Thomas Jefferson Rusk. Early area
settlers such as General James
Smith (the namesake of Smith County) and William B. Ochiltree
(the namesake of Ochiltree County) donated land for the creation of
the county seat of Henderson, named
for their friend and the first governor of the state of Texas, James
Pinckney Henderson.
The county’s first courthouse was of log construction built
in 1843. This structure was demolished for the building of the second
courthouse in 1850. The contractors were Cadawaller W. Chaney,
Joseph D. Johnson and John Henderson. On August 5, 1860, during a
devastatingly hot and dry summer, a fire nearly destroyed the entire
business district in Henderson and
damaged the courthouse. The fire was blamed on a pro-Union abolitionist
named Green Herndon who was implicated by a Black woman who confessed
that Herndon had hired her to start the fire. A mob tied Herndon to
a horse and dragged him around the square until he died then hung
him from a tree and shot bullets into his lifeless corpse. The 1850
courthouse was subsequently repaired, but the building was finally
destroyed by fire in March of 1878. That year, the construction of
the third courthouse began. Built at the highest elevation
in the original townsite, it dominated the surrounding landscape and
could be seen for miles. Designed by Austin
architect F.E.
Ruffini, it was a red brick and stone, Second Empire style building
with an Italianate style clock tower. The courthouse had chimneys,
an elaborate cornice, pediments at the roof line over the entrances,
balconies over the central entrances on each side and pilasters between
each bay of windows which had segmented and round arches in contrasting
colors. Ruffini
designed a similar looking courthouse
for Gregg County in 1879. He would go on to design several more
Texas courthouses until his death in 1885.
By the late 1920s, the third courthouse was deemed too small and unsafe
so it was decided to construct a new one. To alleviate traffic around
the courthouse square, the fourth courthouse was built two
blocks north of it on top of a small hill. When the 1878/79 courthouse
was demolished, it left a large open intersection at the conjunction
of North and South Main streets and East and West Main streets (an
unusual distinction in the state’s courthouse squares.) The fourth
and current courthouse was constructed in 1928 and designed by Dallas
architect Arthur E. Thomas with his architectural partner Corneil
G. Curtis and associate architect A.C. Gentry. The concrete and brick
courthouse is in the Classical Revival style (the style of this courthouse
is also referred to as Texas Renaissance) with Art-Moderne style details.
This four story building of stepped massing has a parapet roof and
a raised basement and the main entrances lead up to the second floor.
Each entrance is surrounded with smooth concrete with a panel over
the entrance that has a pair of carved gargoyles looking at each other
with a wreath and empty shield between them. The building’s modest
ornamentation includes brick pilasters between each bay of windows
with carvings in their capitals and festoons on the spandrels between
the second and third floor windows.
An oil boom more than tripled Henderson’s population between 1930
and 1933 and in 1936, an addition in the same architectural style
and detail was added to the west side of the courthouse, designed
by the building’s original architect, Arthur E. Thomas. Although the
interior has received modern renovations over the years, the exterior
remains virtually unchanged and this courthouse continues to serve
the county today.
Terry
Jeanson, August 27, 2013
Sources:
County history and biographical information from The Handbook of
Texas Online. Courthouse information from The Texas Historical Commission’s
County Atlas at http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/shell-desig.htm National
Register of Historic Places: Henderson Commercial Historic District,
The Courthouses of Texas by Mavis P. Kelsey & Donald H. Dyal, 2007
and The People’s Architecture: Texas Courthouses, Jails, and Municipal
Buildings by Willard B. Robinson, 1983.
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 |
Same view of
the Rusk County Courthouse in 2005
Photo courtesy Lori
Martin |
Courthouse architecural
detail
Photo courtesy Terry
Jeanson, July 2007 |
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L - Courthouse
griffin detail
R - Twin griffins with blank crest
TE photos, 5-03
More Texas Gargoyles
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The 1928 Rusk
County Courthouse cornerstone
Photo courtesy Terry
Jeanson, July 2007 |
Rusk
County center of county marker
on the courthouse lawn
TE photo, 5-03 |
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