Get a glimpse into the past at the Cass County Courthouse

The Cass County Courthouse in Linden, Texas, holds the honor of being the oldest continuously functioning courthouse in Texas.

The Cass County Courthouse in Linden, Texas. Photo by Renelibrary courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

 

The courthouse opened in 1861, the same year the Civil War started, and it hasn’t closed since. It has gone through several renovations during its 159-year history.

Linden hasn’t always been the seat of Cass County. That title, and the county’s very first courthouse, belonged to the town of Jefferson, 20 miles to the south. The county seat moved to Linden when it was founded in 1852, according to TexasEscapes.com.

Linden’s very first version of the Cass County courthouse was a modest building made of wood that stood on the same spot as today’s courthouse from 1853–54. It was a two-story building that was later sold, hauled off the town square and, ultimately, knocked down by a tornado.

The current courthouse building was originally built in the Greek Revival style and constructed from locally fired brick. Over the course of its century and a half of service, the courthouse has undergone four major sets of renovations. Two of those were prompted by another tornado in 1908 and then fire damage in 1933.

Renovations in 1917 changed the buildings’ architectural style to Classical Revival, while renovations in the 1980s increased the building’s size and modernized its interior office space.

Turning back the clock

The latest courthouse makeover was completed in 2012 and restored the building to its 1934 appearance. The work was funded by a $4.4 million grant from the Texas Historical Commission.

The 2012 overhaul returned all public spaces — both inside and outside — to the way they looked in 1934, right down to the light fixtures and globes. It also improved the courthouse’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, as well as its handicap accessibility.

Today, the courthouse still occupies a prominent place in the center of Linden, where it's providing a new generation of Texans a unique link to the past.

Sources: THC.Texas.gov, Wikipedia.org, Catalog.Archives.gov, TexasEscapes.com.

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