The Parker County Courthouse is an historic building located at Courthouse Square in

Weatherford, Texas Weatherford () is a city in and the county seat of Parker County, Texas, United States. In 2020, its population was 30,854. Weatherford is named after Thomas J. Weatherford, a State senator and advocate for Texas's secession to the Confederate ...

, the seat of Parker County. Built in 1884–1886, it was the county's fourth courthouse; the first was a wooden building, and the second and third both burned down. Architect

Wesley Clark Dodson Wesley Clark Dodson (1829–1914), most often known as W.C. Dodson, was an architect of Waco, Texas. Dodson fought for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. He traveled to Galveston, Texas from Alabama and later mov ...

, who designed at least six courthouses in Texas, designed the Second Empire building. The three-story

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

building is visually divided into five

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

s; the end and central bays are projecting and feature stone

pilaster In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

s at their corners. The second-story windows are tall and arched, and the roof line features

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

ing around the eaves. The red shingled roof has two

mansard A mansard or mansard roof (also called French roof or curb roof) is a multi-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterised by two slopes on each of its sides, with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper, and often punctured by dormer wi ...

s atop the ends and a three-story tower in the center; each piece features

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...

s and a

widow's walk A widow's walk, also known as a widow's watch or roofwalk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola/Turret (architecture), turret frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the W ...

, while the tower has

louver A louver (American English) or louvre (Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences) is a window blind or window shutter, shutter with horizontal wikt:slat, slats that are angle ...

s and a clock on its upper stories. The courthouse was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on 1965.

References

External links

Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas County courthouses in Texas Buildings and structures in Parker County, Texas Wesley Clark Dodson buildings Clock towers in Texas Government buildings completed in 1886 National Register of Historic Places in Parker County, Texas Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks 1886 establishments in Texas {{ParkerCountyTX-NRHP-stub

See also

References

External links