The
Hill County courthouse was completely reconstructed in 1998 after the original
courthouse burned in 1995. The new courthouse is a replica of the 1890
National Register Text
| The Hill County Courthouse
burned New Years, 1995
A Texas version of the Second-Empire style, the Hillsboro courthouse is the tallest building in the county and can be seen for miles when approaching the county seat from any direction. It is placed in the center of a typical Texas courthouse square with landscaped lawn and trees. The courthouse is three stories tall with a basement and attics. A tall central tower extends the total height of the building to seven stories. The exterior walls are of ivory colored rusticated limestone with banded dressed limestone pilasters edging all projecting corners, banded dressed limestone columns and bases, and dressed limestone trim around the windows, doors, and cornice. The plan is symmetrical and basically square, There are four identical five-bay facades; each with end pavilions and central three-story raised portico. The roof treatment varies. The main body of the roof is hipped. The end pavilions are terminated with pyramidal mansard roofs truncated by decks with molded caps, the front part of each roof is brought down at the outside corner to correspond to the projection of the pavilion on the facade, giving the corner of the mansard roof a re-entrant angle. A small gable projects up beyond the cornice at the center of each pavilion and a dormer window is placed immediately above this in the mansard roof. Additional dormers face in toward the body of the building making a total of four at each corner. The central porticos have gable roofs and the prominent central tower is shingled and has a convex mansard roof with two windows per side and a projecting cornice above at the first level, straight sided second level with central louvered opening flanked by two smaller openings, all with hood molds, and convex roof again at the top level with flat deck and four clock faces with heavily molded curved drip stones. There are two large chimneys. The porticos have very tall one-story engaged banded and dressed bases with rusticated stone defining the two pilasters of each base. These support three story free standing banded columns with modified Corinthian capitals. The pediment has attenuated brackets beneath a wide cornice and a large deep arch springing above the columns. The wide entablature above the columns is repeated on the remainder of the building with Victorian brackets and belt courses. The openings are varied. Those of the first floor are arched with large keystones and filled (or blind) panels above the lintels of the one-over-one light double-hung sash type windows. The second and third story windows are divided with carved limestone panels. The third story windows, like those of the first story, have arched openings with the arches filled above the lintels. The windows in the porticos repeat this scheme, but are very slender and tall with an arch pattern and huge keystone uniting the group above the third story. Three louvered openings mark an attic story in each pavilion. There is a cast-iron balcony above the door. Four pilasters frame the doors, each with fanciful capitals and large brackets. Low-relief patterns are carved in these brackets and in the entablature they support. A high relief belt course extends around the building at the top of the first story, made up of a pattern of flowers and leaves. The interior of the building has been altered. The exterior was renovated in 1970. Hill County was created from part of Navarro County in 1853 and named for George Washington Hill. The citizens were authorized to vote for a site for the county seat which would be named "Hillsborough", and chose a centrally located site. The first courthouse of elm logs was built in 1854 and served until 1856. The second, more substantial, courthouse was a two-story brick building which burned down in 1872. In 1874 a third courthouse, again a two-story brick building, was built for $15,000 and served until the present structure was erected. In 1889, when the present courthouse was planned, the location of the county seat was contested, but the final vote on November 6th gave Hillsboro 2611 votes to Woodbury's 1287. After the election the contract for the present courthouse was let on December 19, 1889, to Lovell, Miller, and Hood of Brownsville for $83,000. The old courthouse was sold at auction on December 21 of that year for the sum of $120, and during the construction of the new building county offices were mainly in the Ewell Hotel. Records indicate that the contractors sustained a loss of $4,714.22 over the contract price. (Approximately 50% of the total cost of construction related to the quarrying, transportation, carving, and placing the limestone rocks which form the exterior face of the building.) County officials along with the citizens of Hill County donated more than enough to repay the contractor's loss. The architect of the Hill County Courthouse was W. C. Dodson, listed as a Waco architect in the 1885 roster of Texas architects. Dodson also designed the Hood County Courthouse at Granbury in 1890, a courthouse that is almost identical to that of Parker County at Weatherford which was built in 1885 and was probably designed by Dodson. All three of the courthouses are of a Texas version of the French Second Empire style, all have identical central towers, and are otherwise closely related. The Hillsboro and Weatherford county courthouses are eye-catchers and photographs of them have been frequently included in nationally distributed articles and books on Texas or on Texas architecture. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964. |