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Edwards County Courthouse and Jail

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1891, Ben Davey and Bruno Schott, builders; 2014 rehabilitated, Stan Klein. 100 Main St.

Centered on a courthouse square surrounded by commercial buildings, the Edwards County Courthouse is a square two-story building constructed of rock-faced limestone, five bays wide on each side, and with a pyramidal roof. Since it is small, the courthouse has a center-hall plan rather than the cross-axial plan typical of the period. The projecting central bays on the north and south sides have arched doorways. Sills and lintels are simple slabs of limestone. Rock-faced quoins emphasize the building’s corners and entrance bays, and the dressed outer corners form sharp vertical lines. The building’s sole ornamentation is the foliated design on the gable cornices. The ground floor is devoted to offices, and the second floor contains the courtroom. The courthouse was rehabilitated with funding from the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program.

The Edwards County Jail of 1895, at the square’s northeast corner, was built with the same rock-faced limestone as the courthouse but without quoins. On the corner of N. Sweeten and E. Austin streets is the Historic Rocksprings Hotel (former Gilmer Hotel) of 1916, a Craftsman-styled building to which an arched Spanish style portico was added later.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Gerald Moorhead et al.
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Data

Citation

Gerald Moorhead et al., "Edwards County Courthouse and Jail", [Rocksprings, Texas], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/TX-02-RB1.

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, 430-430.

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