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Historic place

Old Red Courthouse

100 S Houston St, Dallas, TX

A red sandstone courthouse built after four earlier ones on the site burned.

📅 1892–1966🏛️ Government BuildingRepurposed
Open on the mapSlide back to 1892

The story

Four of the five earlier courthouses on this site burned, so the builders of the 1892 version used masonry and cut stone. Max Orlopp Jr. of Little Rock designed the red sandstone Richardsonian Romanesque building. Its 123-foot clock tower held a two-ton bell, but the tower was removed in 1919 because it was structurally unstable.

Carrie Nation lectured in a courtroom in 1904 and drew a crowd that spilled into the hallways. Sarah T. Hughes was sworn in there in 1935 as the first female judge in Texas. Kennedy's motorcade passed the building minutes before his assassination in 1963. A newer courthouse replaced it in 1966. After renovation in 2005 to 2007 it became the Old Red Museum, and the tower was rebuilt.

What's There Now

The Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals moved in during 2024.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The tower space stayed empty for nearly a century until the 2007 renovation rebuilt it.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 1976.
In 1910 the courthouse was the site of the lynching of Allen Brooks.

Nearby history

Dallas County Administration Building

411 Elm St · 161 m away
Dallas County renovated the lower five floors for offices after buying the building in 1977.

Dallas Public Library (temporary home)

400 S Houston St · 233 m away
In 1954 the building served as a temporary library while the city built a new central library.

Dallas Morning News Building (Young Street)

508 Young St · 401 m away
The newspaper's Young Street complex housed its operations for about six decades before the paper left in 2017.

Dallas Times Herald Building

1101 Pacific Ave · 495 m away
The mid-century home of an afternoon newspaper that closed in 1991; the building was demolished two years later.

Reunion Arena

777 Sports St · 586 m away
The arena where the Mavericks and Stars played for two decades, and where Reagan accepted the 1984 nomination.

The Starck Club

703 McKinney Ave · 599 m away
A Philippe Starck-designed nightclub where ecstasy was sold legally over the bar until 1985, with Stevie Nicks among the

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Red_Museum