Hunt County Courthouse, 1929
Greenville, Hunt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1929 as the seventh Hunt County Courthouse, this building was designed by W. R. Ragsdale & Sons of Greenville and Page Brothers of Austin. The 6-story building depicts a transition from classical revival to art deco architecture. It features solid masonry construction, stone steps leading to triple-arched doorways at the main entries, decorative terra cotta detailing and metal sash windows. It remains the seat of county government. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
By 1929 Greenville had already worn through six earlier courthouses, and the seventh — the one still standing — caught a moment when American public architecture was pivoting from stately classical revival toward the streamlined optimism of art deco. Local firm W. R. Ragsdale & Sons joined Austin's Page Brothers to raise a six-story landmark of solid masonry, decorative terra cotta, and triple-arched entries that remains the seat of Hunt County government.
Why it matters
County courthouses were the civic anchors of Texas towns, and this one shows in stone how a growing community announced its permanence and ambition between the world wars.
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Related people
- · W. R. Ragsdale & Sons
- · Page Brothers
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Seven Courthouses of Hunt County
Greenville, TX
When Hunt County was organized in 1846, court first convened in the open air under oak trees before a log cabin courthouse rose on the Greenville square in 1847. Over the next eight decades the county cycled through a succession of buildings—frame, then brick—several lost to condemnation or the fire of 1884 that also gutted the surrounding business district. The present courthouse, the seventh, was dedicated in 1929 on the county's 83rd anniversary.
Greenville
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Created in 1846, Hunt County set its seat at a spot donated by surveyor McQuinney Howell Wright and named it Greenville for Texas independence veteran Thomas J. Green. Unusually for north central Texas, the county voted for secession, and Greenville endured hardship, violence, and federal occupation through the Civil War and Reconstruction. The arrival of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad in 1880 transformed the town into a cotton-shipping powerhouse, complete with banks, streetcars, and Texas's first municipally owned electric utility.
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Built in 1883 by Virginia B. Stevens, daughter of Col. James Bourland, this Southern Colonial home rose on land tied to the very founding of Greenville, incorporating part of an earlier house. It passed down through her daughter before being sold in 1912, its successive owners drawn from the town's leading families. The house stands as a record of the founding generation who shaped Hunt County.
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