In the flanking bays decorative buttresses between the windows further segment the facade. The central bay is created by the projecting entry wing with a protected porch on the ground level and an enclosed space on the second floor. This front is divided into three bays delineated by its four prominent tourelles. The courthouse has an entry in the middle of each facade but the primary approach is from the north. The building is given its distinctive character by the detailed brickwork on the cornice, the stringcourses and the window hoods, and by a series of diminutive buttresses and turrets (or tourelles) which rise from the cornice. A frame cupola rises from the center of the main gable roof. The courthouse has a cruciform plan with a main east-west axis and two-story portico projections midpoint on the north and south facades. The Shelby County Courthouse is a two-story red brick gabled building in a romanticized Romanesque Revival style. On adjacent blocks surrounding the square are low-scale commercial buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The raised square is surrounded by a sidewalk and a wide swath of paved parking. A geometric pattern of sidewalks crisscross the square between the buildings and a high curb bounds the landscaped square these improvements are believed to date from the 1940s. The square is a level, slightly raised site with a cultivated lawn and a number of oak trees which shade the buildings. Also on the site but considered Noncontributing are a fire station, a bandstand, a rest room building, and several monuments. The additional Contributing structures are the old jail (contemporaneous with the Courthouse) and the Classical Revival-style Records Building of 1913, both of which are informally sited adjacent to the Courthouse. This nomination seeks to amend the original listing to include the entire courthouse square with its related historic buildings. The focus of the square is the 1885 Shelby County Courthouse, a somewhat naive version of Romanesque Revival design that was individually listed in the National Register in 1971. The Shelby County Courthouse Square is one square block at the heart of Center, in deep East Texas. Gibson (John Joseph Emmett Gibson), a native if Ireland, designed the Shelby County Courthouse using the castles of his homeland as inspiration.
Building Materials/Description: Wood 3rd Courthouseīuilding Materials/Description: Brick, $26,000.
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