Designed in an Art Deco style and constructed of steel and concrete and clad in smooth cream-colored limestone. The six-story building features an overall pyramidal form, ornate grilles, and geometric ornament. As originally built, the Courthouse was symmetrical, but large expansions to the north side in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in an asymmetrical silhouette. The windows in the building's central mass are joined into five recessed vertical window bays, with decorative cast-iron spandrels between the windows and pilasters running vertically between bays.
About this site
Travis County Courthouse is a courthouse in Austin, Travis County, dedicated in 1930. It is one of 591 historic sites cataloged in Travis County in the Texas Historical Commission Atlas.
The site sits at 30.2734, -97.7452 near Austin. The nearest cataloged historic site is Travis County Government, Third Site for (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Zachary Taylor Fulmore, Goodman Building, and Brizendine House.
This record corresponds to Texas Historical Commission Atlas #4302000044. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.
The Travis County Courthouse in downtown Austin, now named the Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse, was built between 1930 and 1931 in the PWA Moderne style and was designed by the firm of local architect Charles Henry Page (Page Brothers), with H.E. Wattinger as contractor. The six-story steel-and-concrete building is clad in cream-colored limestone and features symmetrical rectangular forms, recessed vertical window bays and neoclassical detailing, with Art Moderne and Art Deco finishes inside; substantial additions were made in 1958 and 1962. It replaced earlier Travis County courthouses of 1855 and 1876, and was the site of the 1946–1947 Texas district court hearings in the Heman Marion Sweatt desegregation case argued by Thurgood Marshall, later decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Sweatt v. Painter (1950); the county renamed the building in Sweatt's honor in 2005.
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