DID YOU KNOW... Hidalgo County has had four courthouses?

By Kimberly Selber

The courthouses of Hidalgo County reflect not only the region’s legal and administrative growth but also changing architectural ideals across three centuries. From a riverside brick structure to a modern glass-clad complex, each courthouse captures the county’s response to population growth, shifting civic needs, and prevailing design philosophies.

 

1887 The Original Courthouse in Hidalgo: Before the Move to Edinburg

Hidalgo County’s first permanent courthouse opened in 1887 in the original county seat, then called La Habitacion (later renamed Hidalgo). Built by Samuel W. Brooks using locally fired brick, it followed a simple two-story plan—rectangular, symmetrical, and functional. Yet, its location on the flood-prone Rio Grande made it vulnerable, and repeated flooding and river erosion in the 1880s prompted officials to seek higher ground.

By the early 1900s, the railroad bypassed the town of Hidalgo, accelerating the push to move the county seat northward. John Closner, a local political leader and landowner, donated acreage to found the town of Chapin (renamed Edinburg in 1911), and in 1908, county voters approved the relocation. The transition was swift: records were moved the morning after the election, and a tent and temporary frame building served as the interim courthouse.

 

1910 Courthouse: Mission Revival with Regional Identity

Following the seat’s relocation, commissioners approved $75,000 in bonds to construct a new courthouse and jail. The design commission was awarded to San Antonio architects Atlee B. Ayres and Henry T. Phelps, both of whom had experience with public architecture in Texas. Construction began in 1909 and was completed the following year. 

Ayres and Phelps designed the building in the Mission Revival style, a deliberate reference to South Texas’s Spanish colonial past. The two-story, cross-axial plan featured open arcades on the ground floor, symmetrical facades punctuated by hipped-roof towers, and a curved parapet at each entry—formal elements drawn from early California missions and Mexican haciendas. The roof was tiled in red clay, and decorative ironwork hinted at Ayres’s time in Mexico City.

Internally, the first floor housed administrative offices, while large district courtrooms dominated the second floor. The building sat at the center of a four-block public square, landscaped with citrus trees, palm groves, and, briefly, a deer enclosure.

The structure aged unevenly. By the 1930s, arcades had been enclosed for space, the foundation required reinforcement, and WPA assessments described the basement vaults as moldy and poorly ventilated. Still, the courthouse symbolized civic permanence in the rapidly growing town of Edinburg, and its style was one of the few Mission Revival courthouses built in Texas at the time.

 

1954 Courthouse: A Modernist Break

By mid-century, Hidalgo County had outgrown the 1910 courthouse. The population had nearly quadrupled, and the building was failing structurally. In 1951, after public petitions, the county hired Weslaco architect R. Newell Waters to design a new courthouse on the same square.

Waters, trained at MIT and experienced in the evolving styles of the era, proposed a sleek, International Style structure. The new Modernist courthouse, completed in 1954, stood six stories tall, its concrete and stone facades marked by horizontal ribbon windows and flat roofs. Gone were ornamental towers or arcades—instead, the building used clean lines and functional forms to suggest order and efficiency.

Internally, the courthouse consolidated nearly all branches of county government, with five courtrooms on the second floor, jury dormitories, and department offices on upper levels. The 1954 building reflected a broader trend in Texas and U.S. courthouse design: a shift toward modernism and cost-effective public buildings in the post-war period.

Still, the building’s functionality declined as the population surged again in the 1960s and ’70s. A large addition in 1980 expanded the square footage and courtrooms, but by the 2000s, the structure was overwhelmed. Security concerns, inadequate circulation, and aging infrastructure made it increasingly unworkable for a county that is now among the fastest-growing in Texas.

 

2024 Courthouse: Scale, Security, and Regional Design

After a decade of planning, construction began in 2019 on another new courthouse designed by HDR Architecture with ERO Architects. The 321,000-square-foot facility spans seven stories and reflects the scale and complexity of 21st-century county government. It includes 24 courtrooms (with space for more), separate circulation for detainees and judges, and integrated security screening—none of which were possible in the 1954 building.

Architecturally, the 2024 courthouse blends contemporary form with regional cues. The exterior uses porcelain panels inspired by Edinburg’s historic brickwork. A metal brise-soleil wraps the upper stories, laser-cut in patterns referencing Talavera tiles, a subtle nod to the region’s Hispanic cultural history. A wide staircase and shaded forecourt restore the civic presence that had been absent in the modernist design it replaces.

Rather than a pure International Style structure, the new courthouse employs layered geometry, site-specific materials, and shaded massing—combining functionality with symbolic resonance. It represents a return to architectural storytelling, a gesture seen in recent civic buildings across Texas that aim to reflect both place and purpose.

Each iteration of the Hidalgo County courthouse tells a story—not just of legal process, but of regional identity, resourcefulness, and changing ideas about what public space should be. The 1887 courthouse spoke to frontier permanence; the 1910 Mission Revival building aligned civic life with cultural heritage; the 1954 structure embodied postwar modernism and administrative efficiency. The newest courthouse returns to a sense of place—not through revivalist ornament but through material language and spatial intent. In form and function, it acknowledges the complexities of a growing county while reasserting the courthouse square as a civic center, not just a government address.

 

The 1887 Courthouse in Hidalgo, TX after restoration. Photo courtesy @treywilsonattorneytx, 2020.

The 1910 Courthouse in Edinburg, TX.

Photo courtesy of The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

The 1954 Courthouse in Edinburg, TX.

Photo by Danny20111993, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The 2024 Courthouse in Edinburg, TX.