DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The ground you're standing near — or passing by — has been holding up Jefferson County's seat of government since before most of Texas was even a going concern. Let me walk you back through it, layer by layer, because this site has had more lives than most courthouse squares care to admit.
It all started in 1838, two years after Jefferson County organized itself into existence. The first building to go up here wasn't a courthouse at all — it was a jailhouse. Now, you might say that tells you something about priorities, but the marker doesn't say that, so I'll just let it sit there.
That jailhouse was completed on land acquired from Nancy Tevis, a pioneer settler of the area, and it pulled double duty housing county offices and courts right alongside whatever unfortunate souls found themselves behind its walls. When the commissioners court eventually outgrew even that arrangement, sessions spilled out into private homes around Beaumont. County business, conducted in somebody's parlor.
Picture that. The first actual courthouse on this site was completed in 1854. John A.
Beaumont built it — a two-story square structure ringed by a six-foot picket fence. Sturdy, serious, the kind of building that meant to last. And it was put to uses nobody entirely planned for.
Baptist and Methodist congregations held Sunday services inside those walls. Then the Civil War came, and the courthouse was leased to D. T.
Inglehart, a Confederate surgeon, who used it as a hospital. The law gave way to the operating table. By 1893, Beaumont had been incorporated for twelve years, and the county was ready for something grander.
E. T. Heiner designed the second courthouse — three stories of red brick with white trim, the kind of building that makes a statement about a town that's going somewhere.
And Beaumont was going somewhere, alright. The oil boom of the nineteen-twenties saw to that in a dramatic hurry. The population swelled, and that proud red-brick building simply couldn't keep pace.
So in 1931, it was replaced by the courthouse that stands today. Fred Stone and A. Babin designed it, and what they gave Jefferson County was fourteen stories of art deco ambition — sculpted ornamentation on the outside, marble work on the inside.
From a jailhouse on a pioneer woman's land to a fourteen-story monument to the oil age, this ground has never stopped reinventing itself. That's Jefferson County for you.
What the marker says
The first county building constructed at this site was a jailhouse completed in 1838, two years after the organization of Jefferson County. Located on land acquired from Nancy Tevis, a pioneer settler of the area, it also housed county offices and courts. When the commissioners court outgrew the facility, sessions were held in private homes. The first courthouse here was completed in 1854. Built by John A. Beaumont, it was a two-story square structure surrounded by a six-foot picket fence. Baptist and Methodist congregations conducted Sunday services in the building and during the Civil War it was leased to D. T. Inglehart, a Confederate surgeon, for use as a hospital. A second courthouse was constructed in 1893, twelve years after the incorporation of Beaumont. Designed by E. T. Heiner, it was a three-story red brick building with white trim. Following the area oil boom of the 1920s it proved inadequate to meet the needs of the growing population and was replaced by the present brick courthouse in 1931. Designed by Fred Stone and A. Babin, the fourteen-story building features art deco styling in the use of sculpted ornamentation and marble interior work.