A Texas Road Trip 2.9 - Bexar County Courthouse - Revisited (Texas No. 42)

The second day of the trip concluded in San Antonio.  My daughter and I spent last Christmas there and we had very gray, washed-out days.  I vowed to return to get a better shot of one of the largest and most beautiful courthouses in Texas, the Bexar (pronounced "bear") County Courthouse.  I made a reservation at a downtown hotel and I was afraid of the traffic conditions coming in at 5:30 in the afternoon, but downtown was quiet and peaceful, nothing like what we experienced the week of Christmas.  I checked in, headed back out, found a free parking place a short two blocks away and walked over for a second chance at this beauty.

Constructed:  1892-1896
Architectural style:  Romanesque with Spanish influences
Materials:  Pecos red sandstone and Burnet pink granite with red and green tiles
Architect:  James Riely Gordon, Texas's master courthouse architect
Original construction cost:  $621,000

The original post can be found HERE.

Another repeat of the December trip was a meal at Mi Tierra Cafe Y Panaderia, the oldest restaurant in San Antonio located in Market Square.  My hotel was directly across the street and I wanted another opportunity to see the ever evolving mural of folks associated with San Antonio.  Here are two panels from the huge mural which wraps around two walls of the inner portion of the restaurant, which opened in 1941 and has the capability of seating 500 guests.  It never closes and it celebrates Christmas every day with decorations of Christmas trees, lights, and tinsel all over the place.

This was a long, hard day.  And I have failed to tell you of all my troubles on this trip.  The first day I experienced GPS problems  Someone (no doubt me!) put in an erroneous setting when I updated the maps before I left and every time I went through a town it had me going to the strangest places.  I experienced delays of a couple of hours wandering around country roads until I finally discovered the problem and reprogrammed the device.

On this second day at lunchtime I noticed when I visited the ladies room that my face appeared to be sunburned.  I've lived in Texas and Arizona my entire life and I've never experienced a sunburn to this degree.  I actually purchased sun screen and a big floppy hat but by the end of the day my face was red enough that people were staring.  And although I made ten stops during the day, my usual exposure was no more than about five minutes with the exception of my second stop of the day when I was probably in the sun about 10 minutes before noon.  That evening I checked to see if perhaps any of my medications might be to blame, although none were particularly new.  That's when I discovered that there was a recent warning that, although rare, photosensitivity issues with one medication could be severe.  I would have to see what the next day would bring.

A Texas Road Trip 2.8 - Atascosa County Courthouse (Texas No. 72)

The next stop was in Jourdanton, county seat of Atascosa County.  I cannot give you a pronunciation because I've never heard the county name spoken.  I should have stopped and asked someone but I didn't think of it at the time, as it had been a long day.  I did not traverse long miles but up to this point I had made ten stops along the way.

Constructed:  1912
Architectural Style:  Mission Revival
Materials:  Brick and stone

Some people say Jourdanton "stole" the county seat from Pleasanton but history says there was a special election in 1910 in which the outcome was a vote to move to courthouse from one town to another.  I don't know why an election was held but it caused many hard feelings between the two towns, some of which still exist today.

Jourdanton has very slowly grown over the past censuses and now has a population nearing 4,000.  It is located 130 miles from Laredo on the Mexican border, 400 miles to the Oklahoma border, and 115 miles from Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the home courthouse of Paula, blogger friend from Pauline's Country Tales.  I hope the photo is to your liking, Paula.  I had nothing to do with that dramatic sky but I'm so happy it made an appearance!

A Texas Road Trip 2.7 - Live Oak County Courthouse (Texas No. 71)

The next stop on day two of this Texas Road Trip had me finding the Live Oak County Courthouse in George West, Texas.

Constructed:  1919
Architectural Style:  Texas Renaissance
Materials:  Brick and Concrete

George West was named after its founder, George Washington West, a wealthy rancher and land developer who donated some of his ranchland and $100,000 for a railroad right-of-way in 1912 for a townsite.  He then added $75,000 to the pot for the construction of a courthouse, a school, highways, and public utilities in exchange for the county seat being moved from Oakville to his town.  $175,000 went a long way in the early 1900s!

Today George West is still a small town of 2,500 people.  It is located 350 miles south of Dallas, 210 miles southwest of Houston and 370 miles southwest of my home in Garrison.

Texas has a number of two-name towns, and some of my favorites, in addition to George West, are Ben Wheeler, Robert Lee, Ben Arnold, Ben Ficklin, Bud Matthews, Glen Rose, Joe Lee, Rich Coffey, and Lily White.

A Texas Road Trip 2.6 - Bee County Courthouse (Texas No. 70)

I have to issue a heartfelt apology to the Bee County Courthouse.  This is probably the absolute worst photo I've ever taken.  And this was the best of the worst!  The light was horrible.  There was construction in front of the courthouse and wires all over the place.  Crisscrossed wires no less.  And then the detail coming out of the camera was extremely poor.  After spending two hours trying to revive a photograph that was just not meant to be revived - in other words, it was dead and past resuscitation - I happened upon the above effect which gave it somewhat of an architectural interpretation and it's just the best I can offer.  It doesn't even show the front of the building but maybe you'll get the message.  It is a classic courthouse, a dome, a clock, a goddess on top and stately Corinthian columns.  You'll have to fill in the rest of the blanks!

At least one of the dome shots is halfway decent and shows some color!

Bee County Courthouse
Constructed:  1910
Architectural style:  Beaux Arts\
Materials:  Bricks
Namesake:  Col. Barnard Bee, a Republic of Texas statesman
County Seat:  Beeville, population 13,250, 90 miles south of San Antonio , 185 miles southeast of Houston, and 345 miles south-southeast of Garrison, Tx (too far to return for a retake)

A Texas Road Trip 2.5 - Karnes City (Karnes County Courthouse - Texas No. 69) and Kenedy

I have a special knack for traveling hundreds of miles to photograph an historic courthouse and arriving at the front door to find it under construction.  Such was the case on this trip, although I did manage to find several more courthouses to add to my collection.  The Karnes County Courthouse in Karnes City, Texas, was built in 1894 after the county seat was moved from another small town.  In the 1920s in a remodeling effort the turrets and clock tower were removed.  Today another renovation is underway to restore the look of the 19th century courthouse.  I'll probably never see the renovation but if you would like to view an architectural rendering of the proposed changed you may view it here.  I think it will be stunning.

I find very little information about the courthouse online.  Karnes City is a small town of 3,100 30 mles southeast of San Antonio, 300 miles south of Dallas, and 320 miles southeast of my home near the Texas/Louisiana border.  This fifth stop of the day was a mere six miles south of the church in Panna Maria.

The next stop was in Kenedy (one N only), another six miles down the road to see the town's post office mural.  Sometimes the local post offices have really thwarted my efforts to photograph the murals, as evidenced by the hanging fluorescent lights which now hang directly in front of and on either side of the mural!

Nonetheless, I think it's a beautiful painting by Charles Campbell in 1939 titled Grist for the Mill.  It depicts the early cotton industry in the area.  The first gin in Kenedy was built in 1891.  And therein lies the error in this work of art.  Dictionaries define "grist" as a grain, which is processed in a mill. Cotton is a fiber, which is processed in a gin.  Campbell supposedly wanted to use a gunfighter theme for his mural but the local postmaster and other citizens didn't want to highlight the city's nickname of Six-Shooter Junction and encouraged him to focus on a local industry.  In any material I read about the mural no one seems to have picked up on the fact that the title pertains to a grist mill while the subject matter deals with the processing of cotton fibers.  Campbell also painted a mural for the post office in Angola, Indiana.  He was paid $560 for this piece which is 14 feet long by 6 feet high.

A Texas Road Trip 2.4 - Panna Maria

Panna Maria (Polish for Virgin Mary) is a tiny community just five miles down the road from Cestohowa and is the oldest Upper Silesian settlement in the United States.  It was settled on Christmas Eve, 1854, and its original citizens were from Silesia, which at that time was part of the Kingdom of Prussia.  Many of its residents still speak a dialect of the Silesian language which has come to be known as Texas Silesian.  Its signature church is the Immaculate Conception.

The church is considered to be one of the painted churches of Texas, although it is much simpler than the other examples of Czech painted churches primarily located in Fayette County.  I had not intended to post any pictures of the interior because for some reason most of the photos I took have these horizontal lines.  But I decided to show you one and I hope that someone can tell me why this happened.  All the photos on this trip were taken with the same camera, one that I use frequently when traveling because it is lightweight and has a good zoom.  The only photos with this anomaly were of the Panna Maria church.  Any ideas, folks?

A statue of Pope John Paul II stands near the main road on the side of the church.  As you probably remember, John Paul was a native of Poland and he is revered by the Polish Catholics.  The inscription on the sculpture reads as follows:

In Poland, Panna Maria, Texas is very famous.  Everyone knows of Panna Maria and those first Polish immigrants who responded to the call of their pastor and spiritual leader, Father Leopold Moczygemba.  All of our great American Polonia credits its origin to you, Panna Maria, as the first nest built on American soil by Polish immigrants inspiring others to follow in your footsteps.  Pope John Paul II to Polish Texans and Parishioners of Panna Maria, September 13, 1987.

Even though Panna Maria is considered a ghost town it has a post office ...

... and a visitors center.  Its current population is 10.

A Texas Road Trip 2.3 - Cestohowa

After Floresville I headed south in search of the tiny settlement of Cestohowa, one of the first Polish settlements in the United States.  It was only 22 miles but I had no addresses so no way of programming my GPS but I had handwritten out the directions on how to find this tiny community. This little house with a neatly kept lawn was my first clue that I was in the area and then I saw the church spire.

Like many of the Czech Catholic churches in Central Texas, the beautiful Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary looms on the horizon long before you get to the building.

Cestohowa was founded in 1873 by 40 Silesian families who lived in a nearby village (more on that tomorrow!).  For a few years it had a post office and a school but in the 1930s its population declined to about 100, the same as today.  For a small village, the church is massive.  The parking lot probably accommodates 200 vehicles and there are 65 pews in the sanctuary.  The interior of the church is simple but beautiful.

At the edge of the parking lot on the church grounds was this rather large bush with the red/orange blossoms which had attracted dozens of black swallowtail butterflies.  I had a larger lens in my car so after my photos of the church I retrieved the lens and captured many nice photos of these beautiful butterflies.  Just an extra added attractive which wasn't on my list of things to see.

A Texas Road Trip 2.2 - Wilson County Courthouse (Texas No. 68)

After spending much longer than I had planned in Seguin, I proceeded to Floresville, a small town of 6,000 35 miles to the south, to see the Wilson County Courthouse.  It was the most exciting visit of the entire trip because I fully expected the 1884 Italianate structure to either be gone or surrounded by a chain-link fence.  In October of 2011 the building was abruptly evacuated when engineers discovered major structural problems.  Employees had reported the upper floor seemed to be sinking with debris falling to the lower floor.  The walls were discovered to have cracks all the way to the foundation and one wall was bowing outward.  It was later reported that repairs could cost as much as $10 million and the county was considering whether or not the building should be abandoned.  At some point later I saw a YouTube video depicting scaffolding practically holding up the building and the further announcement that it was unknown what would be the ultimate outcome.  I had little hope of finding a beautiful building worthy of adding to my historic courthouse collection.  The news reports had stopped and no further information was forthcoming.

Imagine my surprise upon arrival on the courthouse square to see a fully intact structure, although gutted, and workers busy doing their trade.

Even Lady Justice seemed to be fresh, although she had a bird sitting on her head who stayed there the entire 10 minutes that I walked back and forth surveying what was happening.

All offices previously maintained in the building had been moved to various places around the small town but I noticed that the County Clerk's Office was housed in an annex attached to the building at the rear.  A very nice young clerk advised that evidently the problem had not been quite as severe as originally anticipated and that repairs were ongoing.  She suggested I simply walk to the front door, stick my head in for a quick peek, and no one would be worried or upset.  So I did just that.

I actually found painters who were working to complete the renovated staircase.  A friendly group, two of them came to the front door to speak to me and we had a nice conversation.  I couldn't help but ask when the renovation would be completed.  The fellow in the above photo said, "Well, they really want it done by the Peanut Festival," which has been an annual tradition in Floresville since 1938. He later told me the festival takes place the second week in October (which happens to be now, although my visit was in late September), so I really don't think it's totally done by this date.  But amazing strides have been made and I am thrilled that the people of Floresville have not lost their historic courthouse and have a beautifully renovated building which should last them at least another 131 years!

Of special interest:  When I told the painter about the bird sitting on Lady Justice's head he remarked that his friends, who had just given her a fresh coat of paint that morning, would not be happy to know about that.

The courthouse was originally red brick but in the 1930s the brick was covered with stucco.

Floresville is 290 miles south of Dallas and 320 miles southwest from my home in Garrison, Texas. Its most notable citizen is John Connally, governor of Texas who was a passenger in the car with President Kennedy at the time of his assassination in Dallas in 1963 and who was also wounded in that attack.

A Texas Road Trip 2.1 - Sequin's Historic Houses

One of the most delightful historic homes in Seguin is the Dietz-Castilla Dollhouse built in 1910 by Louis Dietz, a German immigrant carpenter who built the house for his five-year-old adopted daughter who arrived in Seguin on an orphan train.  Many years later Pablo Castilla, a successful Hispanic immigrant entrepreneur, purchased the Victorian playhouse and in 1967 donated the sweet little house to the Seguin Conservation Society.  Dietz and Castilla were friends and associates for many years.

What little girl wouldn't love playing in her own special dollhouse?  This photo was taken through on a window of the house.

Seguin was once known as the Concrete City for constructing many buildings out of one of the first forms of concrete using limestone.  The Zorn house (aka Sebastopol), a Greek Revival private home constructed in 1856, is considered one of the country's best preserved examples of 19th century experimentation with concrete construction.  I drove by the house to take a photo and noticed a sign that said a tour would be starting at 9 a.m.  It was 9:05 but I decided to see if I could join the tour when I discovered I was the first visitor of the day so I received a private tour by a very knowledgeable and informed gentleman.  I wished I could have stayed in Seguin longer because I had the most fun in that little city of the entire trip.  But I had to be on my way because the second day was the longest with the most stops.

A Texas Road Trip 2.1 - Seguin

Life is ever changing, isn't it.  I had to be away another few days because this time my laptop crashed and it had to have a new hard drive.  That's two computer failures in the past few months.  I now have computer services again and the sale of my family's property is speeding down the road.  I finally have a land survey scheduled and an appraiser should be contacting us soon.  An attorney is preparing sale documents, deeds, et cetera.  At present I have a driving trip planned to Arizona before the end of the month to take some items that need to be transported and I'm hoping for my final move before Thanksgiving or at least by the end of November.  All this means I won't be posting or visiting while this relocation occurs.  In the meantime I'll try to post the remainder of the road trip I took in September and the following post is the first stop of the second day in Seguin, Texas.

Seguin is a lovely city of 25,000 35 miles east of San Antonio and is named for the political and military leader during Texas' fight for independence from Mexico and continued to be an important force throughout the early days of the Republic and later  after Texas' admission to the Union.  This large beautiful statue of Seguin dominates the plaza in the central portion of the city.

Seguin's first church and bell tower built in 1849 still stand and have been lovingly restored.  The two doors for the church entrance illustrate an earlier practice of having a door for the women and children and a separate door for the men!

St. James Catholic Church in the early morning light

A Texas Road Trip 1.4 - Coryell County Courthouse (Texas No. 7) Revisited

Stop four on my road trip took me from Waco  40 miles west to Gatesville so I could take another look at the Coryell County Courthouse.  Like Waco I had been through here in the past but was not all that pleased with my photo of this beautiful courthouse (see original photo).  As I stopped on the north side of Main Street it looked the same as it had four years previously: pecan trees hiding the details, a washed-out sky, that bright while sunlight that caused overexposure problems and turned the white statuary into ghosts.  I kept looking for a better angle so I got back in the car and decided to check out another view.  As I drove past the south entrance the scene was completely different.  It was more open and visible, clouds suddenly appeared above to give some definition, and at this point I decided that the entrance on Leon Street had to be the main entrance and the north side was actually the back of the courthouse.  I wondered why the official address on Main is not the front of the building.  A short while later I found the answer.  Keep reading.

Constructed: 1897
Architectural style:  Beaux Arts
Materials:  limestone and red sandstone

Since my last trip I had discovered the many Post Office murals in Texas and I had learned that Gatesville had one, so the next stop was to see Joe DeYong's "Off to Northern Markets" painted in 1939.  In the foreground the cook drives his chuck wagon along the trail while the cowboys are driving a herd of horses and a much larger herd of cattle.  De Yong was a real life cowboy and western artist, a protege Charles Russell at his Montana studio, and also worked on a technical advisor in the movie industry.  At the time he produced the mural he was also working with Cecil B. De Mille on the set of Union Pacific.

As I was taking my photograph, a gentleman stopped and asked if there was anything about this big painting (10 feet long, 5 feet high) that bothered me.   I told him I loved everything about it but for some reason the mules pulling the cook's wagon seemed a little off.  He explained that the mules are depicted as pacing where both legs on the same side of the animal move forward together, rather than a trot where two legs diagonally from each other move forward together.  He said only horses pace, not mules.  I thought the mule bodies looked a little more like horses than mules but otherwise I had no complaints.  We discovered he had grown up in Nacogdoches near where I live and I explained why I was driving through town and mentioned my dilemma about the address of the post office seeming to be on the back side of the building.  That's when I learned that what is now Leon Street was once Main Street but many years back when a major U.S. highway came through the town the town fathers felt that the main road should be called Main Street so they reversed the names of the streets but the courthouse kept the same address so today the back side of the courthouse is believed by many to be the main entrance when in reality it is not.  Strange!

As I headed out of Gatesville to my final destination much further south I crossed the Leon River.  Texas has some beautiful very wide rivers and they are very difficult to photograph from the roadway.  As I drove off the bridge I noticed a paved road to the right which led to a small parklike area with a boat ramp so I stopped for a few snaps and spotted a white egret.  He waited very patiently while I took several photos, seemed to be oblivious to my presence, and we both eventually went on about our day.

I hope you're all having a pleasant weekend now that autumn is official here.

A Texas Road Trip 1.3 - McLennan County Courthouse (Texas No. 6) Revisited

Stop 3 on my September road trip included a must see in Waco, county seat of McLennan County.  Yesterday's post featured a mural concerning the McLennan family's settlement of this area of the state.  I visited Waco on my first Texas courthouse road trip back in the summer of 2011 but the photo I took did not include the building's dome, which happened to be under renovation at the time.  It was well worth the revisit!  You can see that first photo HERE.

Constructed:  1901
Architect:  J. Reily Gordon, the master courthouse architect (and my favorite!)
Materials:  limestone, concrete and marble with a Texas red granite base
Architectural Style:  Beaux Arts
Inspiration:  St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome

The dome was completely restored but today it appears that the left arm of Themis, the Greek goddess of divine law and justice, seems to have been damaged and the scales of justice have disappeared.  During the renovation the statute was restored, replacing the blade of the sword which had blown off in a previous storm.  Wind storms in this area are known to cause many problems for the intricate details of these historical buildings.  But I think you will agree with me that this is one of Texas' finest!

A Texas Road Trip 1.2

Stop two was in the little town of Mart in McLennan County 20 miles outside of Waco to see the Mart Post Office mural.  McLennan Looking for a Home by Jose Aceves features a buckskin clad Neil McLennan, a Scotsman who was born on the Isle of Skye who later found a home for his family on the Bosque River near present day Waco in 1845.  All of us who were born west of the Mississippi are descendants of such brave pioneers who came from other places, whether it be Tennessee or Virginia or other parts of our country or from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, the Canary Islands and other parts of the world who embarked on a journey seeking a new way of life in the mid-1800s.  This mural speaks to me and reminds me of the struggles and bravery of my ancestors in settling a new land, one far away from a life they once knew.

Aceves was born in Chihuahua, Mexico but came to our country during the Mexican Revolution and exhibited extensively in the El Paso region.  He was paid $670 for this beautiful piece measuring 5 by 12 feet in 1939.  Like so many of the post offices built in the 1930s, the light streaming in from upper windows as well as a fluorescent fixture immediately above the artwork made it difficult to photograph but I was able to burn in the lightened area to somewhat alleviate the blur which appeared in the lower left corner./  

A Texas Road Trip 1.1 (Day 1, Stop 1)

Here I am returning after another long absence.  My plate has been very full lately.  I was again inundated with work for several days before my trip and the work piled up and came thundering down upon my return.  Then I was advised that the buyer for my farm has been approved for financing through the USDA in a program which supports young adults in the agricultural industry.  So now I've been involved in the many things that will need to be accomplished to close escrow, which on a farm is about five times more complicated than if you're just buying or selling a house.  Environmental studies and land surveys are just a part of the process.  It could take possibly as long as two months for those things to happen.  The ultimate outcome will of course result in my returning to Arizona, hopefully by Thanksgiving and surely by Christmas.  I have taken a temporary leave of absence from my work to help me deal with all these issues.

So here goes with that Texas road trip I promised you a few weeks ago.  Normally I just edit a bunch of pictures and throw them in a bucket and sort of draw them out randomly but this time I've decided to show you what I saw in chronological order.

My first stop was in Teague, Texas, 130 miles west of home, and my only purpose was to see the Post Office mural which I had heard about.  Its title is Cattle Roundup and it was painted by Thomas M. Stell, Jr., in 1940.  Upon first glance one might think this was an appropriate mural for this area of the state but upon closer examination,  many of the details are not authentic.  Teague itself is considered a part of East Texas and the landscape portrayed by Stell doesn't exist.  Stell was a native of Cuero, Texas, and taught at the Dallas Art Institute and surely was aware that saguaro cactus does not grow in Texas.  The armadillo is also out of place in a plains locale and I can't imagine a mother vulture putting her nest of eggs on top of a rock out in the hot Texas son.  The cowboy's boots look more like Dutch clogs than cowboy footwear.  And the baby saguaro is almost laughable.  It's definitely an interesting piece and Teague is no doubt pleased, as it should be, that it is one of the elite towns that has a Post Office mural.

As I left the post office I noticed a mural just across the street on the side of a large building portraying the early days of Teague when the railroad was an important part of its economy.  As most towns, Teague evidently had a nice depot with a hotel within a short distance.  The mural seemed to be a bit faded but I was happy I had stumbled across it.  Today Teague has 3,500 residents and seems to be a quiet little town.

As I drove over the railroad tracks and out of town I glanced to my left and there was the depot!  Obviously restored and very beautiful, there was a big train engine parked there and when I went back to explore a bit I realized the engine was running.  Before I left it actually backed up a few feet!  A note here about the photo.  When my computer crashed not too long ago I naturally lost my Photoshop program which I primarily used to run some Topaz filters.  I eventually found my Photoshop box but the disc was missing and it still had one use on it.  I had the serial number and I know there is a way to download it from the web but I searched for longer than I usually spend doing anything and was unable to find out how to do that.  While I was looking around on the web I ran across a program called Smart Photo Editor, opened a trial version of it, and while playing around I came up with this wacky shot of the train and the depot.  This is really out of character for me but I decided to pay for the program and I had a lot of fun for too many hours yesterday playing with this new toy.

And sitting right next to the depot was the Teague Hotel.  I think I found a couple of jewels in a little town that most people only pass through!

I'll try to spend a couple hours visiting your blogs today.  Then I must go see about getting new tires for my truck in anticipation of a trip to Arizona!