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U.S. Post Office and Courthouse

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1935, Wyatt C. Hedrick; later additions. 106 W. 4th St.

Hedrick’s Renaissance Revival post office and courthouse is a dignified three-story block, with its first two stories faced in buff brick, a third story clad in limestone, and a limestone cornice running between the two layers. The ground story is seven bays wide, centered on three openings framed by limestone arches with scrolled keystones. The second floor has paired rectangular windows set behind shallow metal grillework balconies, and the third floor has paired windows set in molded frames.

In the 1990s, the judicial functions of the Hedrick courthouse were moved to the graceless two-story Lucius D. Bunton III U.S. Courthouse (1995), two blocks west at 410 S. Cedar Street. Efforts to stem the flow of drugs across the Mexico-Texas border have led to a large federal case load in Pecos.

S. Cedar Street (U.S. 285), Pecos’s main north–south thoroughfare, is a wide, bleak strip. Yet one block to the west, the historic main street, S. Oak Street, is delightful, with preserved, if not always occupied, one- and two-story retail buildings from the twentieth century, such as the former F. W. Woolworth store (1954, Doyle Clinton Maddux; 301 S. Oak), now the Memory Lane Antique Car Museum.

Around the corner at 115 W. 3rd Street, the Trans Pecos Bank (former Security State Bank; 1960, Harper and Kemp) is a handsome two-story building shaded by extensions of the second-floor and roof plates over the sidewalks. Freestanding sunscreens in front of recessed second-floor windows emphasize the shading theme.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "U.S. Post Office and Courthouse", [Pecos, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-MT43.

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, 469-470.

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