Historic Shelby County Courthouse and Jail, Texas Poster

" Historic Shelby County Courthouse and Jail, Center, Texas" by Catherine Sherman. The Historic Shelby County Jail was designed and buit in 1884 by Irish born architect John Joseph Emmett Gibson. It was one of the first of two brick buildings built in Center, possibly even in Shelby County. It is the epitome of an 1880′s small-town Texas county jail. It compliments the Historic Shelby County Courthouse, also design and built by J.J.E. Gibson. It is now the home of the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce. The historic Shelby County Courthouse in Center, Texas, was modeled after an Irish Castle with towers, a cupola, and hidden stairwells. In 1884, the Irish-born architect John Joseph Emmett Gibson received the commission to design the courthouse, made the bricks and built the courthouse Gibson chose a style and decorative elements that allowed him to demonstrate his skill as a brickmaker and mason. Gibson also designed and built the adjacent jail building, also in brick. Coordinated courthouse and jail buildings constructed at the same time were rare. These may have been the first brick buildings in the town and possibly the county. The Shelby County Commissioners Court formally accepted the new courthouse -- "The Irish Castle on the Square" -- on Feb. 12, 1886. The original county seat was Shelbyville when the county was established in 1836. Thirty years later, the county clerk R.L. Parker decided that the county seat should be in the center of the county. About that time, the Texas state legislature passed an act requiring countries to have centrally located county seats. Shelbyville officials didn't want to give up the county records, so one night Parker drove an ox cart to the courthouse door in Shelbyville and took them. The records were placed under armed guard in a log cabin near the geographic center of the county and the city of Center was born. A wooden courthouse was built, but it burned in 1882, and the records were lost. The magnificent new brick courthouse was then built to replace it. The historic Shelby County courthouse was was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1969 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.