Lamar County Courthouse
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The March 1916 fire that left downtown Paris in ruins ravaged Lamar County's massive 1897 Romanesque courthouse and tower, once thought indestructible. On April 20, 1916, the Lamar County Commissioners Court chose local designers and builders William G. Barry, Edwin R. Smith and Elmer George Withers to work with the Fort Worth architectural firm of Sanguinet & Staats to design a new courthouse. The county judge and commissioners court and Carl G. Staats reviewed the designs of several courthouses around the state. Some Paris residents requested that the new courthouse be built in the center of its lot in keeping with the city's plans for wide roads at the town square, but the court decided that it would be more efficient to build the new structure upon the same foundation as the old courthouse. The upper ruins of the old courthouse were dismantled by July 1916. In late August the commissioners chose J. C. Buchanan and J. N. Gilder of Fort Worth, who did significant work in rebuilding Paris after the fire, to serve as contractors. Construction began in September. By that time the restoration and renovation of several other buildings around the square was nearing completion, and downtown Paris took on a modern appearance. Completed by November 1917, the new courthouse was built of fireproof concrete covered by rough pink granite salvaged from the 1897 building. Distinctive features of the imposing Classical edifice include corner pavilions and engaged granite columns and the Classical cornice with matching terra cotta ornament (notably eagles and medallions). Marked by triple-arched porticos, the primary entrances echo the Romanesque style of the original structure. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The great fire of March 1916 gutted Lamar County's massive 1897 Romanesque courthouse, once believed indestructible. Within weeks the commissioners hired local builders alongside the Fort Worth firm of Sanguinet & Staats, and by late 1917 a new fireproof concrete courthouse rose on the old foundation, sheathed in rough pink granite salvaged from the ruins. Its Classical design — corner pavilions, engaged columns, terra-cotta eagles, and triple-arched entries — anchored a downtown rebuilt in modern form.
Why it matters
Rising from the ashes of a catastrophic fire, the courthouse stands for how American communities rebuilt their civic hearts with even greater permanence after disaster.
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Related people
- · Sanguinet & Staats
Related events
- · Paris Fire of 1916
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First National Bank of Paris
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William J. McDonald, a Civil War veteran and lawyer, opened this bank at its present location in 1886, one of several banks he built across northeast Texas through shrewd, patient management—careful in lending yet slow to foreclose. The present building went up in 1916 only to be gutted within months by a citywide fire, then rebuilt within the year, and during the Great Depression the bank's loans kept many local merchants and farmers afloat. McDonald left the bulk of his estate to the University of Texas, funding the McDonald Observatory dedicated in West Texas in 1939.
John James Culbertson
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John James Culbertson grew up in the big cities of the Northeast before a salesman's eye spotted profit in Southern cottonseed oil. Moving to Paris in the 1880s, he built the town's first cotton mill and eventually a small cottonseed-oil empire, gaining a national reputation that led to seats on the new Dallas Federal Reserve board in 1914 and a wartime federal cotton bureau under President Wilson. After fire ravaged Paris in 1916, he and his wife Emily helped rebuild, giving the city libraries, monuments, and a marble fountain.
The Paris Fire, 1916
Paris, TX
On the windy afternoon of March 21, 1916, a fire broke out near a warehouse at the southwest edge of Paris, Texas, and 50-mph winds drove it in a funnel-shaped path across town. Before it was checked at dawn the next day, the blaze had destroyed nearly half of Paris — the courthouse, city hall, federal building, churches, and most of the business district — with damage estimated at $11 million. Firefighters came from as far as Oklahoma, and the glow was visible forty miles away.
Paris Fire Department
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Fire protection in Paris began in the early 1870s when businessmen led by Willet Babcock organized the volunteer Phoenix Fire Company No. 1. The city established a paid department in 1908, operating from this site since 1884. The department met its greatest test in the catastrophic fire of March 1916, which killed three people and destroyed some 1,400 buildings.