Travis County Courthouse

When the courthouse opened in 1931 it did so with a jail on the top floor.[4] From 1962 to 1964, this jail was expanded to additional floors.[5]

In December 1972, twelve inmates brought suit against the county, alleging that the conditions in the then 280-person jail on the top two floors of the courthouse constituted cruel and unusual punishment.[6][7][8] On July 31, 1974, Federal District Judge Jack Roberts wrote an opinion stating that county commissioners "have failed to meet their responsibilities in providing a safe and suitable jail for Travis County".[9] On December 9, 1978, Travis County voters approved an $8.5 million bond package for a new jail.[10]

Construction on the new jail began in 1981, and Travis County officially took ownership of the new jail in 1986 after costs had ballooned to more than $21 million.[11] On October 21, 1988, US Magistrate Judge Stephen Capelle ordered the old jail closed by December 1990,[12][13] however, the jail wound up being retired early, on April 6, 1990.[14]

Coincidentally, the lawsuit that ultimately resulted in the closure of the jail was filed the same year as Ruiz v. Estelle, whose plaintiff, Austinite David Ruiz, alleged cruel and unusual punishment in the TDCJ Wynne Unit of Huntsville, Texas[15]

In the early 2010s, as population growth in Travis County continued to strain the courthouse's capacity, the county made plans to replace the 1931 courthouse with a new, still larger facility. Officials selected a county-owned downtown lot near the site of the first county courthouse, and on August 18, 2015, the Travis County Commissioners Court voted to propose a $287 million municipal bond issuance to fund a new courthouse complex.[2] In the November 2015 general election, however, the bond measure was rejected by Travis County voters, and the county instead enacted a "preservation master plan" in January 2016 to provide for necessary repairs to the existing courthouse.[16]

After the defeat of the courthouse bond, the county began pursuing ownership of the 1936 United States Courthouse that had recently been left vacant by the completion of a new federal courthouse complex.[17] At a press conference on December 29, 2016, officials from Travis County and the federal judiciary and local U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett announced that ownership of the old federal courthouse had been transferred to Travis County.[18] The county then budgeted $28 million to bring the structure up to current building codes and adapt it to house the county probate courts by 2020.[19]

On July 10, 2018, Travis County entered a negotiation agreement with developers to design and build a new downtown court facility,[20] and on January 15, 2019, the county approved funding for the project.[21] Construction began with a groundbreaking ceremony on May 31, 2019, with the new facility scheduled for completion in 2022.[22]

In 1946, an African-American law student named Heman Marion Sweatt was denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law on the grounds that the Constitution of Texas prohibited racially integrated education. Sweatt sued the University with the support of the NAACP, and his suit was heard in Texas District Court in the Travis County Courthouse in June 1946 and again in May 1947, where Sweatt's case was argued by a young Thurgood Marshall.[23]

After the state established a temporary "School of Law of the Texas State University for Negroes," the district court found that the state had fulfilled its constitutional obligations to Sweatt; Sweatt appealed his suit to the Supreme Court of the United States, however, and in 1950 the Supreme Court ruled in Sweatt v. Painter that Sweatt should be admitted to the University of Texas.[23] On October 21, 2005, Travis County renamed its courthouse the "Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse" in honor of this notable trial in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.[1]

The original main entry (now closed for security reasons) is in the east facade, where a staircase leads from street level up to bronze doors within a projecting doorframe, with an elaborately carved lintel depicting a judge releasing shackled prisoners to a celebrating crowd. 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. The facade was originally symmetrical north and south, but large expansions to the north side (added during renovations in 1958 and 1962) now give the building a lopsided silhouette.[1]

The building's interior exhibits Art Moderne and Art Deco finishes and detailing. The structure was originally built to hold three courts and all county government offices, with the county jail on the top two floors.[1] As of 2017, it now houses two county civil courts, a justice of the peace court, thirteen Texas district courts, two district clerks, and two probate courts,[2] though the probate courts are set to be relocated into the former federal courthouse building by 2020.[18]