Irishtown

The block where Nueces County built its courthouses was bought from Henry Kinney. After the county organized in 1846, officials governed from their homes. A courthouse designed by Felix von Blucher followed in the 1850s at a cost of $4,000, and by 1875 the county needed more room. The Hollub Courthouse, named for its designer, went up beside it in Greek Revival and Italianate style with a wooden portico and staircase. Both buildings were demolished to clear the lot for the 1914 courthouse, so three generations of county government stood on one site.

What the plaque says

Irishtown Bounded by Twigg and Tiger Streets, Hall's Bayou and Corpus Christi Bay, the section of the city's Ward One known as Irishtown included primarily Irish residents, although there were also Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, African Americans, Greeks and others. By the 1830s, Irish settlers migrated to San Patricio in response to advertising in the northeastern U.S. by empresarios McMullen and McGloin. Others came with the establishment of Henry L. Kinney' trading post or after serving under Gen. Zachary Taylor during the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-48). Many early settlers were carpenters, laborers, farmers, cattlemen, merchants or blacksmiths. In 1853, a Methodist church began in Irishtown; its building provided space for school as well as worship services. Builders constructed the first Nueces County Courthouse that year, followed by the second, built in 1875 and known as the Hollub Courthouse, and third, built in 1914. By the late 1880s, the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railway reached the city, with a depot on Tiger Street. By 1900, Irishtown had a volunteer firefighting unit, Shamrock Hose Co. No. 4. The community also had a baseball team which played on a field at the intersection of Chaparral and Fitzgerald Streets. Nearby was Artesian Park, where bands featuring neighborhood musicians held concerts and festivals, and politicians campaigned for office. Although Irishtown declined after the replacement of the Bascule Bridge with Harbor Bridge in 1959 and the loss of county offices in 1977, the Bayfront Science Park would become home to museums, convention and event facilities, and Heritage Park, which includes several residences of old Irishtown. Today, the historic neighborhood continues to be an area rich in culture and heritage. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Art Museum of South Texas — 0.3 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 0.6 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• Mirador de la Flor — 0.7 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 0.7 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• McCampell House — steps away
• Jalufka-Govatos House — steps away
• Sidbury-Savage House — steps away
• Theodore Merchant Lawrence (January 16, 1861-August 10, 1941) — steps away