Gonzales County Courthouse Gargoyles - Gonzales, Texas - Gargoyles and Chimeras on Waymarking.com

The Gonzales County Courthouse is a red brick three-story eclectic Romanesque Revival structure with white limestone trim. The building is cruciform in plan with four semicircular entrance bays filling in the four corners of the cross which give a blocky, massive quality to the form. There is a central tower above a red tile hip roof.

The basement is raised and of rusticated limestone. The windows are grouped with piers or columns marking the divisions and are given various treatments; flat lintels, Roman arches, and Gothic arches, all with emphatic limestone lintels and architraves. The two main entrance bays have open Roman arcades at the first level and open galleries with colonnades at the second topped by wide limestone bands and open brick parapets. Limestone stringcourses divide the stories . One circular bay at the rear has its second story treated as a piano nobile with very tall round arched windows with three lights. The windows in the rest of the building are of the one over one double hung sash type.

The tower is square in plan and is flanked by four open cupolas with colonnades and stilted domes. Each side of the tower has three narrow Gothic windows and the four clocks of the tower have transparent faces superimposed over the brick archivolts of the windows and limestone cornice. The corners of the cornice boast four gargoyle water spouts. An open colonnaded belvedere with a pyramidal red tile roof crowns the tower.