Ellis County Courthouse Historic District - Waxahachie, TX
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N 32° 23.140 W 096° 50.861
14S E 702462 N 3585222
The Ellis County Courthouse Historic District is located in downtown Waxahachie, south of Dallas, TX. Waxahachie is the county seat of Ellis County.
Waymark Code: WM7F6D
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 10/17/2009
Views: 18
The Ellis County Courthouse Historic District is located in downtown Waxahachie, south of Dallas, TX. Waxahachie is the county seat of Ellis County.
Roughly bounded by both sides of Waxahachie Creek N to Union Pacific RR tracks & between both sides of Elm and Flat Sts., Waxahachie
From Wikipedia - (
visit link)
According to An Informal History of Texas by Frank X. Tolbert, "Waxahachie" is an Indian word meaning "cow manure."
The first syllable is pronounced "wahks", not "wax" as is often the case. Also, the official Native American meaning of the name is "cow creek" or "buffalo creek" and is not the name of a Native American tribe which is a common misconception. The word "creek" in some translations is "chips" making the town name mean "buffalo chips". Another, much more believable etymology for the name is insisted on by speakers of Wichita, the language of the tribe which used to live in the area but now lives mostly around Anadarko, Oklahoma. Wichitas claim the name comes from their word "waks'ahe:ts'i" (The apostrophe represents a glottal stop, like the middle sound in "oh oh"; "a" is schwah ("uh"); "e:" sounds almost like the "a" of "hat"; "ts" before "i" in this language often sounds like "ch" to English speaking ears; "i" has the continental value, like the one in English "machine"). It means 'fat wildcat'. Source: Dr. David S. Rood, linguist at the University of Colorado, who has been studying the Wichita language since 1965.
From the TX Historic marker at the courthouse.
Ellis County's first courthouse was made of cedar logs and built here in 1850. A second courthouse was built on this square in 1853 and a third in 1874. In 1894 Virginia native and San Antonio architect James Riely Gordon was commissioned to design the fourth Ellis County courthouse to be built at this site.
The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1895, and the courthouse completed in 1897 with each of its main entrances purposely oriented toward true North, South, East and West compass points. Faces which adorn the courthouse were sculpted by European stonemasons.
The "Richardsonian Romanesque" architectural style used by Gordon to design this building was created by Bostonian Henry Hobson Richardson in the 1870s and popularized in Texas by Gordon. For this structure Gordon deviated from previous Texas courthouses he had designed in the "Richardsonian Romanesque" style by displaying open, two-story arcaded and colonnaded porticos on the exterior of the building and placing entrances at inside angles. Red and gray granite from Central Texas and red sandstone from the Pecos River in West Texas were used to build this courthouse. Gordon's Ellis County courthouse design set a new standard for other public buildings erected in Texas.