Upshur County Courthouse - Gilmer, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 32° 43.745 W 094° 56.674
15S E 317778 N 3622926
The Upshur County Courthouse is a five-story building in an elongated "H" plan, designed in the Moderne style by architect Elmer George Withers in 1936 and completed in 1937.
Waymark Code: WMZVBP
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 01/08/2019
Views: 2
NRHP Nomination Form"Located on the public square in the county seat of Gilmer, the building's minimal exterior ornamentation includes delicately fluted limestone spandrel panels beneath its stacks of bi-fold steel windows, suggesting classical columns. Monumental stairs lead to central entrance bays on the north and south elevations; these connect to meet a five-story central volume, which is flanked by two-story wings on a raised basement.
The structure is of monolithic concrete with clay masonry units, clad in a tan or buff brick veneer laid in a common bond with a Flemish header every seventh or eighth course. The roof, obscured from view by a parapet, is covered with asphalt. A small limestone base and a limestone water table, located just below the first-floor window headers, wrap the building. Spandrel panels of fluted limestone appear between the stacks of steel bi-fold windows at the first, second, and third floors; fluted limestone spandrel panels rest on top of the fourth-floor windows and connect to the limestone cornice. These stacked bays of fluted limestone and window voids read as a Moderne interpretation of classical columns, referring both to the traditions of antiquity and the metaphor of a "temple of justice." On the fifth floor—the smallest volume, constructed as the county jail—the historic window openings have been filled with brick.
The fourth Upshur County Courthouse, designed by Elmer George Withers in 1935 and completed in 1937, is a significant example of the modern classical style frequently utilized throughout Texas for civic buildings during the 1930s and 1940s. Although the style is more commonly referred to as "Art Deco," a term derived from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Moderne in Paris, the building's appearance is more accurately understood as a combination of fairly traditional design concepts with elements of the new "modernistic" formal vocabulary associated with Art Deco and Moderne architecture."