Old Red, the 1892 Dallas County courthouse that nearly fell to the wrecking ball, will hold court again after a $58 million rebuild

Dallas County's castle-like red brick landmark near Dealey Plaza is set to become a working courthouse again for the first time in more than 40 years.

The Old Red Courthouse will undergo a renovation of roughly $58 million that should begin in the coming months and take about two years, Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia told KERA News. When it is finished, the building will house the Fifth District Court of Appeals, she said.

Garcia, who represents District 4 and chairs the county's facilities committee, said the work includes making the building accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act and bringing its technology up to date for a modern court.

"This is part of history, and you don't know where you're going if you don't know where you came from," Garcia said.

County Judge Clay Jenkins described the goal as fitting "a 21st century court facility" into a building from the late 1800s, and said preserving history matters in a city where older homes are often torn down for larger ones.

A near miss in the 1960s

Old Red opened in 1892 and for decades was the center of public life in Dallas, according to KERA, which drew on a written history of the building. Farmers came on the first Monday of each month to register livestock, and a bulletin board on its front steps carried the news of the day.

The building was soon too small. Evelyn Montgomery, a historian with Legacy Dallas, said courts spilled into the hallways within about a decade of its opening. By the 1960s the county had built the George Allen Courthouse across the street, and some local leaders wanted Old Red demolished.

In 1965, then-County Judge Lew Sterrett said opinions were split and warned that keeping it would be expensive. The county voted the next year to save it.

The courthouse last served its original purpose in the early 1980s. Patricia Hicks, who started there as an intern and later worked in the District Clerk's office, told KERA the civil courts on the first floor were busy, but the building itself was in poor shape. It eventually closed to the public and reopened as a museum in 2007.

KERA's reporting did not say what will happen to the museum during or after the renovation.

Sources

kera.org