Van Zandt County Courthouse
Canton, Van Zandt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1937 with public Works Administration funds, this is the sixth building to serve as the Van Zandt County Courthouse. According to local lore, the commissioners court decreed that a modern courthouse should be erected in order to provide jobs for men of the county during the Depression era. The stepped massed edifice with cast stone veneer walls features art deco and art moderne details and is noteworthy for its vertical emphasis and its association with the architectural firm of Voelcker and Dixon. The Wichita Falls and Houston-based firm designed several west Texas courthouses in this style. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1937 with Public Works Administration funds, this is the sixth building to serve as the Van Zandt County Courthouse. Local lore holds that the commissioners ordered a modern building partly to put Depression-era men of the county to work. Designed by the noted firm Voelcker and Dixon, its cast-stone Art Deco and Art Moderne lines gave the county seat of Canton a strikingly vertical, modern silhouette.
Why it matters
The courthouse captures how New Deal public works both employed the jobless and modernized the civic architecture of small-town America during the Great Depression.
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