The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County

The courthouse standing today was designed by C. H. Page and Brother and dedicated in April 1929, according to texascourthouses.com and the Hunt County Historical Commission. It is a six-story Classical Revival building of terra cotta, light brick and cut stone with Art Deco influences, and the National Register narrative says it fills an entire block. The cost was $400,000. Counts of the earlier courthouses differ: the plaque says seven in all, texascourthouses.com lists six, and the Historical Commission chairman told KETR in 2021 that at least seven have stood on the square.

What the plaque says

The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County In 1846, when Hunt County was created, Greenville was chosen as the county seat. Court sessions were held under oak trees at the corner of St. John and Bourland streets until the first courthouse was built here in 1847. A log cabin, it was located on the west side of the square. It was replaced in 1853 by a 2-story frame courthouse on the northwest corner. The center of the square, which had been reserved for a more substantial building, was used in 1858 for the third courthouse. The first brick structure in the county, it was condemned in 1874. County offices were moved to a building at 2610 Lee Street, purchased from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The fifth courthouse, an ornate red brick building with white stone trim, was constructed here in 1883. Thirteen months later it was destroyed by a fire which heavily damaged the town's commercial district. A new courthouse, which closely resembled the 1883 structure, was built in 1885. In 1928 it was torn down to make room for construction of the present courthouse, the seventh for Hunt County. A formal dedication was held on April 11, 1929, the 83rd anniversary of the county's founding. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 1.4 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 25 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 29 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Greenville's Electric Light Plant — steps away
• Greenville — steps away
• Greenville Building and Loan Association — steps away
• Site of Phillips Field/Majors Stadium — 0.3 mi