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Texas program races to save historic courthouses
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press
Published: June 29, 2012
KARNES CITY, Texas (AP) — Visitors climbing the stairs to Barbara Shaw's third-floor office at her South Texas courthouse would spot the gaping cracks in the 19th century brick walls and ask whether the place was safe.
Shaw couldn't offer them much reassurance.
"I mean, what do you say? Everybody that walked in there, when they leave, what do they remember? That rickety courthouse," said the Karnes County judge, who set up shop last year in a new location where she chairs the county commission. "It was scary to walk around there."
Emergency work is under way to save the 1894 building under a unique Texas program that's spent nearly a quarter-billion dollars renovating dozens of deteriorating historic courthouses. Yet, in a state that leads the country with 254 counties, the program has struggled to meet funding requests for a long list of other buildings in such disrepair that the National Trust for Historic Preservation this month placed Texas' historic county courthouses on its annual list of most endangered historic places.
Aging courthouses across Texas are suffering from falling bricks, electrical problems, flooding and other issues.
"We feel being named to the list is giving a voice to these buildings that can't speak for themselves," said Debbi Head, a spokeswoman for the Texas Historical Commission. "These buildings need somebody to tell their stories and hear their cries for help. The attention it's going to bring as a result is going to be what's needed."
The National Trust for Historic Preservation first placed the courthouses on its list in 1998, one year after then-Gov. George W. Bush proposed the Texas Legislature provide a financial lifeline for the endangered structures.
Since then, $247 million has been spent to fully restore 62 courthouses and partially restore another 21, making the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program the nation's largest state-supported historic preservation program and a model for other states.
But with funding being slashed by more than half from a decade ago, at least 70 buildings remain in condition similar to the one in this rural county about 55 miles southeast of San Antonio, prompting the national group to issue its second plea.
For example, north of Karnes County in adjacent Wilson County, the elegant Italianate courthouse in downtown Floresville since 1914 is ringed by a chain-link fence and has been vacant since last year because authorities fear it's unstable. In Kingsville, south of Corpus Christi, panes of glass in the windows at the 1923 Beaux Arts style Kleberg County Courthouse are held in place with duct tape and workers in the basement are subjected to flooding. The Armstrong County Courthouse in the Texas Panhandle, a Classical Revival style building constructed in 1912, has become a safety hazard because of falling bricks and electrical system problems.
The idea of protecting the architectural treasures surfaced as far back as 1975 when the Texas Legislature approved a measure blocking counties from making structural changes or additions to their courthouses without consulting historical commission architects. That stopped a spurt of courthouse demolitions over the previous decades and put an end to projects such as the one in Karnes County where the cathedral-like courtroom with its arched ceiling became concealed with a dropped ceiling of suspended panels to house ductwork and wiring.
Over the years, well-intentioned officials in Karnes and other counties also had stucco applied to the exterior of numerous old courthouse buildings to aid in preservation of the original brick surfaces. Instead, the stucco trapped moisture, hastened the growth of mold and had the opposite effect by accelerating deterioration.
"I think prior to the law counties would just throw up their hands and say let's just put something up," said Sharon Fleming, an architect for the historical commission.
Under the preservation program, counties are awarded state money based on scores from an application that determines the severity of the need. The award also is contingent on county officials matching the state dollars.
The most recent awards two years ago totaled $20 million — compared with $170 million sought by counties applying for help — included emergency money for Karnes County, which is hoping to qualify for a total restoration. It was not clear how much funding is needed to fully restore and maintain the courthouse.
"We want it to last another hundred years, at least," Truett Hurt, chairman of the local historical society, said of the courthouse where a convicted murderer was hanged on the new courthouse lawn even before the building was dedicated in October 1894.
An addition built in 1924 that actually harmed the entire structure's integrity has been razed in the past year and the original look of the rear of the building is being restored.
Karnes County officially has about 15,000 residents although the Eagle Ford shale drilling boom likely has doubled the population in the past two years, Shaw said. Revenues from the increased oil and gas activity are providing a financial impetus to the county matching the state grant for the overall courthouse project, she said.
"We want the tradition of the courthouse to be maintained, not just saving artifacts and bricks but the tradition that goes along with the county using it," said Lewis Fisher, architect for the Karnes County project. "This is what anchors the community and they can be proud of what their forefathers did."
Shaw is looking forward to moving back into a renovated courthouse, preferably without some of the anxiety the old building gave her through the years. She recalled working alone late one night, hearing noises in the walls and thinking it was mice. She set some traps.
"I thought I was so smart," she said. "And then a bat flew past me. We had a picture we took off the wall and hundreds flew out.
"It's going to be better, so much better."