El Paso US Courthouse

About this property

The El Paso U.S. Courthouse, also known as El Paso Federal Building or the U.S. Court House, is a historic building in El Paso, Texas. It is a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The building was completed in 1936 and served historically as a courthouse and as a government office building. It is located at 511 East San Antonio Avenue. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. The Courthouse gives the Federal Government a strong, tangible presence in downtown El Paso. Designed and built in the mid-1930s the building is similar in size, style and construction to government buildings of this era across the country. The architects were Percy McGhee, Guy L. Frazer, and Thomas P. Lippincott. The Neo-Classical Revival facades and durable materials of the blocklike exterior communicate the importance of the functions housed therein to the citizens of the community. The government commissioned artist Thomas C. Lea, III to paint a mural (Pass of the North) in the courthouse in 1938. The basic plan layout is also fairly typical for buildings of this size and era, with spaces configured between and around two large interior courtyards. This arrangement provides light and air to interior rooms, in a way appropriate to the hot, dry climate of Southwest Texas. Originally designed to house two Courts along with offices for related branches of government, growth of the Courts has generated most of the plan changes over time. As of 2010, there were seven courtrooms in the U.S. Courthouse, with an eighth in the planning stage. The United States Courthouse is a rectilinear Neo-Classical Revival composition with Art Deco influences. The plan is rectangular and biaxially symmetrical with respect to the exterior facades, except for a service door on the west side. Rooms are for the most part arranged on either side of an interior corridor around two Light Courts. The elevations are composed of a flat fossilized limestone base, repetitive limestone pilasters separated by windows and a windowless limestone architrave with terra cotta ornament and coping concealing the fifth floor and a flat roof. The dressed stone base extends from grade to the first floor window sill height, where tall casement windows are spanned with limestone panels. The second, third and fourth floor double hung windows are treated as a continuous vertical element between pilasters separated by cast aluminum spandrels. The windowless fifth floor was designed and built with skylights which have now been abandoned. On the facades outside this level the stone architrave is set off with a repeating stylized eagle terra cotta frieze. The fluted pilasters run between the base and architrave, and have no base or capital of their own. The exterior of the building has been largely unaltered with the exception of a limestone faced ramp added for the handicapped. This ramp is compatible with the original building, if less well detailed.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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