Navarro County Courthouse
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Navarro County was created in 1846 by an act of the first Texas Legislature. It was named for early statesman Jose Antonio Navarro (1795-1871), a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The first county seat was established at the home of William R. Howe, an early settler on the Chambers Creek in present-day Ellis County. In 1848, Corsicana was designated the seat of government, and temporary offices were set up in the home of pioneer Hampton McKinney. The second temporary courthouse for Navarro County was a log cabin located on the corner of West First Avenue and Twelfth Street. A second courthouse, built at this site in 1853, burned in 1855, requiring the construction of a third building. In 1880, Austin architect F. E. Ruffini designed a fourth courthouse for Navarro County. The elaborately ornate building proved too small for the needs of the growing county, and a shifting foundation caused the structure to be condemned in 1904. The present courthouse was designed by architect J. E. Flanders of Dallas. Constructed of red Burnet granite and gray brick, it was completed in 1905. The Beaux Arts Classical Revival structure features a clock dome and a pedimental entryway with free-standing Ionic columns. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Created by the first Texas Legislature in 1846 and named for independence signer José Antonio Navarro, Navarro County shuffled through a string of makeshift courthouses — settlers' homes, a log cabin, a building that burned in 1855, and an ornate 1880 design that was condemned by 1904 for being too small and structurally unsound. The present courthouse, designed by Dallas architect J. E. Flanders and finished in 1905, rose in red Burnet granite and gray brick in the grand Beaux Arts Classical Revival style, crowned by a clock dome and a columned entry. Its history is the story of a frontier county growing into permanence.
Why it matters
The succession of courthouses charts how a raw frontier county matured into a settled seat of government, culminating in the monumental civic architecture of the early twentieth century.
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Related people
- · José Antonio Navarro
- · F. E. Ruffini
- · J. E. Flanders
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jose Antonio Navarro
Corsicana, TX
José Antonio Navarro was a San Antonio–born statesman who bridged Spanish, Mexican, and Texan governments across a revolutionary generation, serving in the legislature of Coahuila and Texas and then signing the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. He went on to help write the state constitution and sit in the Texas Senate, and he lent his name both to Navarro County and to Corsicana, which he called after his father's native Corsica. This 1936 centennial marker honors a rare native-born Tejano leader of the Republic.
Thomas Ingles Smith
Corsicana, TX
Born in Virginia in 1800, Thomas Ingles Smith soldiered in the War of 1812 under his father before coming to Texas in 1836 to join the Republic's army. He was wounded at the Battle of the Salado in 1842 and figured in the "Archive War" when Austin residents blocked his Rangers from removing the Republic's records. A frontier Ranger, Indian scout, and treaty commissioner, he lent his name to Fort Smith and helped found Corsicana before his death in 1848.
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Corsicana, TX
In 1853 the Rev. John Patton and about twenty Cumberland Presbyterians organized Corsicana's first church, in the years when the town was still a young frontier settlement. Over the following decades several distinct Presbyterian bodies took root, split, and realigned, until in 1949 they merged into Westminster Presbyterian Church. The Bethel Mexican congregation joined in 1968, adding another strand to the church's history.
Site of the First Courthouse
Corsicana, TX
When the Texas Legislature designated Corsicana as the seat of Navarro County, the location was secured in 1848 through land donated by David R. Mitchell, James C. Neill, and Thomas Smith. The county's first true courthouse was a modest log cabin built here that year, just fifteen by seventeen feet, with the judge's stand in one corner and the county clerk's table in another. A two-story frame courthouse replaced the humble cabin in 1853.