Jefferson County Courthouse

Jefferson County Courthouse
  1. About the Jefferson County Courthouse in Beaumont
    1. Building Catalogations
  2. Architect and team
  3. Architectural style
  4. Spaces and uses
  5. Structure and materials

The Jefferson County Courthouse is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Stone and Babin, and built in 1931 in Beaumont, TX.

Its precise street address is 1149 Pearl St., Beaumont, TX. You can also find it on the map here.

The Jefferson County Courthouse is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Beaumont and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the Jefferson County Courthouse was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on June 17th 1982.

The building has been restored 3 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1981, 1984 and 2009.

Building's timeline

Construction completed
1931
93
a
Restoration
1981
43
Added to the NRHP
1982
42
b
Restoration
1984
40
c
Restoration
2009
15
years ago
2024
  1. 1981 - An annex was incorporated to the north of the original building to increase the usable space. This annex is connected to the original building through the basement, first and second floors. The architect in charge was Budd Van Ness Partnership.
  2. 1984 - Complete renovation. The architect in charge was Budd Van Ness Partnership.
  3. 2008 to 2009 - Replaced the original copper roof from the 40s. The architect in charge was Bailey Architects and LaBiche Architectural Group.

Architect and team

Stone and Babin was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Matchett Herring Coe as the collaborating Artist.

Architectural Style

The Jefferson County Courthouse can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Jefferson County Courthouse was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

It has a total of 14 floors, 13 above ground and 1 basements.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1931, the Jefferson County Courthouse has mainly been used as Governmental space.

Materials & Structure

The Jefferson County Courthouse uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a base with a mix of sandstone, Colorado greenstone and limestone, and continues up with the predominant use of orange bricks, with some beige ones to create accents. As it is common in art-deco buildings, the spandrels are slightly sunken with respect to the facade, creating vertical stripes that emphasize the verticality of the building. From the 8th to the 13th floor the windows change, they are protected by iron bars. This is because in the past those floors were used as the county jail. Today the bars remain, even though those floors are currently used for storage Towards the top of the building we find a setback in the facade, with a decorated cornice and a eight-sided pyramidal roof.

Other materials found at the Jefferson County Courthouse include, terrazo, used on corridors and courtroom floors in some art-deco styled patterns, marble, , marble, , and exotic woods, .

Sources

  • atlas.thc.texas.gov