Harris County Courthouse of 1910

The six-story courthouse holds two courtrooms that are each two stories tall, and when it opened the 11th, 55th and 61st district courts moved in. The cupola came off in 1930, and the granite stairs that had linked the second floor to the ground were removed in 1950. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1981. A renovation begun in March 2009, at a cost of about $65 million, restored the original interior, put back a cupola and the granite steps, and ended with a rededication in August 2011.

What the plaque says

Harris County Courthouse of 1910 When brothers Augustus C. and John K. Allen founded Houston in 1836, they designated this site as the Courthouse Square. In 1837 Huston became the Harrisburg (later Harris) County Seat, and a two-story pine log courthouse was constructed here. The present structure, which was built in 1909-10, served as the fifth Harris County Courthouse at this location. Designed by Charles Erwin Barglebaugh, an associate in the prominent Dallas architectural firm of Lang and Witchell, it features classical revival styling. Outstanding details include the domed roof, ornate central projections, or risalits, with Corinthian columns, and elaborate ornamentation of terra cotta, limestone, and masonry. Building materials include pink Texas granite and light brown St. Louis brick. During construction of the Courthouse, county offices were housed in a nearby theater. Shortly after a new courthouse was built east of the square in 1952, this structure was remodeled for use as the Harris County Civil Courts building. Today the Harris County Courthouse of 1910 serves as a dramatic example of civic architecture and as a symbol of Houston's dynamic growth in the early part of the twentieth century. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.7 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.8 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Old Market Square — steps away
• Harris County — steps away
• Christ Church Cathedral — steps away
• Allen's Landing — 0.2 mi