Fort Worth US Courthouse

About this property

The Eldon B. Mahon United States Courthouse is a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit located in Fort Worth, Texas. Built in 1933, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and was renamed in honor of district court judge Eldon Brooks Mahon in 2003. Completed in 1934 during the Great Depression, the courthouse symbolized growth and renewed optimism in Fort Worth. Akin to other buildings of the 1930s, its design and construction fit the pattern of the New Deal-era federal building programs enacted to relieve widespread unemployment. Recognizing that the city's existing federal building was inadequate for the burgeoning federal agencies, Congress appropriated $1.215 million in June 1930 for the construction of a new U.S. Courthouse. The building's forward-looking design makes a significant contribution to the city's impressive collection of Depression-era architecture. Renowned Philadelphia architect Paul Philippe Cret, in association with prominent local architect Wiley G. Clarkson, designed the building under the direction of the Office of the Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury Department. Clarkson, a native Texan, designed many buildings in Fort Worth during the 1920s and 1930s, including the Trinity Episcopal Church, the Woolworth Building, and the Texas Christian University Library. In 1938, artist Frank Mechau was commissioned under the Public Works Administration's art programs to paint three oil-on-canvas panels in the fourth-floor Court of Appeals. Mechau, a realistic painter who romanticized the American West, is a key figure of the western genre-with work on public view in Federal buildings and art museums across the country. Mechau's paintings were installed in 1940, becoming the only New Deal art commission sponsored in Fort Worth. The U.S. Courthouse was named in honor of Judge Eldon B. Mahon in 2003 for his service in the Northern District of Texas. Mahon presided over some of the most influential social and political cases in north Texas, including overseeing the racial integration of the Fort Worth School District-a 19-year endeavor. The Courthouse remains an important landmark in downtown Fort Worth and is a symbol of the continued Federal presence in Tarrant County. The building is an impressive five-story structure, creating the illusion of a solid limestone mass rising to a height of 94 feet. It is designed in the Art Moderne style, incorporating classical elements. A steel and concrete structure faced with limestone veneer, each elevation adheres to classical principles of symmetry and articulation by a regular rhythm of bays with a centralized principal entrance. Art Moderne elements are embodied by the sharp angles and zigzag surfaces seen in the stacked fenestration of the upper stories, and in the geometric, low-relief abstraction of the ornamentation.

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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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