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Courthouse Square Commercial Buildings

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1870–1966. Bounded by E. 3rd, S. Pecan, E. 4th, and S. Live Oak sts.

The courthouse is surrounded by one- and two-story commercial buildings dating from the late nineteenth century to the present. The Hanna and White buildings (515–517 E. 3rd Street), both built in 1876 with facades detailed to appear as one building, are the most representative structures. The two-story facades are of rough-cut rectangular limestone blocks, with quoins, window jambs, sills, and the flat entablatures of smooth-faced limestone. The first floor of number 517 has a steel lintel and a pair of cast-iron columns framing the glass store front. In 1877, it was rented as the courthouse, and it is from there that the county records were stolen and destoyed in the Horrell-Higgins Feud of 1877. On the same block at number 501, the First Texas Bank dates to 1966 but fits into the historic streetscape through the use of irregular limestone blocks and a cornice aligned with adjacent buildings.

The first-story treatment of the Harralson Building (c. 1885; 418 S. Live Oak) is distinctive in Lampasas, with four large square columns creating an arcade rather than a wall. Tall wood and glass doors with transoms fill in between the columns. An enormous pressed metal entablature and cornice above the stuccoed second story is over five feet tall and projects about four feet. Next door, the two-story Northington Building (1870; 420 S. Live Oak) has a facade of dressed stone. It is the only survivor of a fire in 1884 that destroyed the rest of the block and may indicate the character of the earlier buildings.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Courthouse Square Commercial Buildings", [Lampasas, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-LL27.

Print Source

Buildings of Texas

Buildings of Texas: East, North Central, Panhandle and South Plains, and West, Gerald Moorhead and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019, 280-281.

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