Back in the formative years of the great State of Texas (yeehaw), something as innocuous as a courthouse could mean the difference between prosperity and death for a town and caused literal battles to be fought between neighboring communities (I'll get to that later). Nowadays they do not really have a whole lot of significance unless you have to pay a parking ticket (or that CCTV camera you didn't see caught you whipping it out and pissing all over that blue Toyota last week and you had to go to trial for public lewdness; I know who you are and we need to talk), but back in the day they were sort of a big deal.
I took some pics of a couple of the more attractive courthouses in the north-central part of the state and decided (much like the lunatic that I am) that it would be a great addition to my "bucket list" to challenge myself to photograph all of them. It's been on these road trips that I've seen most of the cool shit I've taken pictures of that you will see on this blog. Again, I never said I was normal.
If you're a nerd like I am and you do questionable shit like this, you develop a bit of a taste for these things; a palette, if you will; you develop an appreciation for the good ones and a distaste for the ugly ones, and a curiosity as to why so many great looking 19th Century buildings got uglified (yes, I made that one up too and no, you can't use it.) in the 20th. You also get to where you can guess about when they were built based upon the architecture (the Depression-era architects loved themselves some Art-Deco). Being an absolute geek, I've come up with a rating system for the courthouses I've photographed (good God, how did I ever get laid?):
E- Excellent: This is the highest rating. "E" level houses are beautiful buildings, sit on attractive courthouse lawns, and maintain the original integrity from when they were first constructed. Most "E" courthouses date back to the 19th to early 20th Centuries and are Gothic, Romanesque or Classical in architecture.
G- Good: These buildings are attractive but not necessarily awesome. Most are of Classical architecture and generally nice to look at but definitely not ever going to be seen on the cover of Texas Monthly.
M- Meh: Not ugly, not attractive, just, well, "meh".
BDEBBB- "Boring Depression-Era Bland Brick Box". Name says it all.
RBR- Ruined By Renovation: These buildings started off pretty but were dragged through the Ugly Forest sometime in the mid-20th Century. When possible I'll include archived pics of what they used to look like before they got jacked up.
W- WTF?: The opposite of "E". These buildings look less like centers of government and more like nursing homes or libraries. There are only a couple of these but yeah, they're hideous.
I'll post a courthouse a week which will keep me busy, and y'all will have plenty to check out because there are 254. Jesus; why couldn't I have picked something less elaborate?
Right, I'm a nerd.
Shit....
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