Flashback : Dallas

Old Red, 2026 (photo by Paula Bosse)

by Paula Bosse

By 1961, the exterior of the Dallas County Courthouse (affectionately known as “Old Red”) had been slowly eroding for years. It was not uncommon for passers-by to have to dodge bits of the sandstone building raining down on them. And inside, county workers complained of severely cramped conditions in a building that had become overcrowded. The plumbing wasn’t great, and the lack of air conditioning made summertime intolerable. The courthouse was built in 1892 and was almost 70 years old.

County commissioners agreed that a new, modern courthouse was needed, and plans were drawn up to submit to the public. The $18,500,000 “Courthouse Building Program” was enthusiastically approved by voters in a September 1961 bond election. This vision included:

• a new courts building and jail (to be erected on Commerce Street opposite the old red courthouse) which would “give space, dignity and stability to our county services”
• landscaped plazas which would “conceal useful and urgently needed underground parking areas”
• seven decentralized, permanent suburban sub-courthouses which the county would own and not have to rent

The new Dallas County Courthouse (which was renamed in 1992 to honor former City Councilman George Allen) began construction in the spring of 1963, and it was finished by the end of 1965. (Plans had changed somewhat by then, as in the intervening time there had been a presidential assassination, requiring the need to utilize one of the landscaped plaza blocks for a memorial.)

Throughout the construction of the new courthouse, heated discussions were going on about the fate of the old courthouse: what would happen to it? Commissioners refused to even discuss the question until the new courthouse was finished. One newspaper article said that this discussion hadn’t been brought up before the bond election for fear that voters wouldn’t approve it if they knew the old courthouse might be demolished when the new one opened (“County To Consider Prisoners as Yardworkers” by John Geddie, Dallas Morning News, Feb. 24, 1965). That didn’t bode well.

Because the sandstone exterior was eroding and the clock tower had been removed in 1919 for fear that it was structurally unsafe, people presumed that the building was in a dangerous state of disrepair and was falling apart. That it would cost more to repair than it was worth. But engineers inspected it at the time and reported that it “would stand for years and years.”

Ultimately, Old Red survived because the Texas Department of Public Welfare wanted to set up their Dallas office in the building: they told the commissioners that they would pay roughly half the renovation cost and that the county could retain ownership. This was sweet music to the commissioners, who decided against the demolition that most expected. Work began at the end of 1967 to update and modernize the old courthouse. It cost a million dollars.

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I was surprised to read how many people absolutely loathed Old Red and were actively urging the county to tear it down. I mean people hated it. I read so many newspaper articles in which people used words like “monstrosity,” “eyesore,” “ugly,” “gnarled,” “creaky,” “unsafe,” “unsightly,” and “obsolete.” Old Red?

There were also many who thought the building was beautiful and historically important and feared that it would be razed. But what could they do except write polite letters-to-the-editor saying that it would be a shame to tear down such an important landmark, and don’t you think it would make a nice museum? Dallasites had not yet become organized community activists for historic preservation, but this might have spurred people to become involved in saving buildings they felt deserved to be saved — the persistent effort to move Millermore to Old City Park and the fight to establish historic districts in Old East Dallas was just around the corner.

Thankfully, Old Red is still hanging in there, and since its incredible makeover in 2006/2007 — which included the welcome return of a clock tower — it looks spectacular. Granted, I didn’t see what the state of the building was in 1961 — and I definitely was not a fan of the clock tower being lopped off — but it’s hard for me to imagine it ever being considered a “monstrosity.” I think a lot of people just don’t like anything that’s old. Or anything that they feel is blocking a path to what they consider “progress.”

It’s also important to “Remember the Alamo!” as an example of how effective public sentiment and organized effort can be. I’m not suggesting that Old Red inhabits the same realm of historical significance as the Alamo, but knowing how difficult it was for a small group of women to save THE VERY SYMBOL OF TEXAS from falling victim to wealthy and powerful developers wanting to build a “luxury hotel” on the site (!)… it’s a miracle we have anything older than 20 years still standing in Dallas, a city known for its insistence on having everything as new and shiny as possible… until people get tired of it, label it “ugly” and “obsolete,” and abandon it or tear it down to build something else. City leaders and citizens must work together in finding solutions when faced with situations like the one Old Red found itself in, especially when it was taxpayers who paid for the building in the first place.

A “world-class city” is not just built with an eye to the future but also with an appreciation of its history. Old Red is 134 years old, and Dallas would not be the same without it. We’re lucky to still have it.

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Sources & Notes

Top photo by Paula Bosse, taken on Jan. 31, 2026 after leaving the 2026 Dallas Legacies Conference, held across the street at the Records Building.

The drawing is from the 1965 book The Key to Dallas by Lon Tinkle. The drawing, which was used in promotional material for the 1965 bond election, is credited to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

Below is a passage from a Dallas Morning News article profiling Patrick Horsbrugh, a Scottish architecture professor who was visiting Dallas. He had “near-ecstatic” praise for Old Red, which he described as being a prime example of “American Robust” architecture:

“Just look at those squat columns! Just look at the forces in that building!” He added, “Dallas is short on architectural inheritance, compared, say, with Boston or Philadelphia. It can’t afford to be as careless as older American cities about what is destroyed.” (“Architect Likes Old Courthouse” by Jim Stephenson, DMN, Oct. 2, 1963)

And a few days later, this paragraph appeared in a DMN editorial about Horsbrugh’s comments, which must have sounded unusual to the ears of people so accustomed to hearing the old courthouse described as an “architectural monstrosity”:

To the generation that built and paid for it out of fairly meager tax resources, it was “the stateliest courthouse in the South.” That is how it was described in the city directory of the day. They thought it a proper canopy for the seat of Justice in Dallas County — and who is to say today that they were a bunch of squares who couldn’t tell the Parthenon from a packing house? (“Dallas Guardians,” DMN, Oct. 7, 1963)

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