Tarrant County's Courthouse Looked Extravagant Before It Opened

Tarrant County's courthouse looked extravagant before it even opened. Construction began in 1893, and the Texas Historical Commission puts the final cost at $408,840. Public anger over the expense helped elect a new Commissioners Court in 1894. The building opened on July 3, 1895, with the Second Court of Appeals as its first tenant.

Gunn and Curtis designed the courthouse in a Renaissance Revival style. Its red-pink Texas granite came from the same quarry used for the State Capitol, and the walls reach five feet thick at their base. A clock tower rises over the bluff where Fort Worth's military post once stood.

The cornerstone holds a wonderfully local time capsule. The county's walking tour lists newspapers, downtown photographs, employee and church rosters, old coins, county wine, and even a lock of hair from a county judge's child inside the copper box.

This is the fifth permanent courthouse Tarrant County has used and the third masonry courthouse on this spot. One earlier building burned and another became too small. The 1895 courthouse survived, giving downtown a working public building whose cost, stone, hidden keepsakes, and skyline presence all tell pieces of the county's growth.