Courthouse Challenge
Vote on your favorite one!
The Texarkana region is blessed with many beautiful and interesting county courthouses. Some of them have been featured in this and various other publications over the years. But never before have we compared them or asked our readers to weigh in on the respective merit of each.
Tours of historic homes are a holiday tradition in many communities, so this seems like a good time to roll out our tour of courthouses, otherwise known at the Courthouse Challenge.
The Texarkana Gazette and texarkanagazette.com will present one courthouse a day (14 in all) from now until Dec. 18. Each profile will include a photo and summary of its history. In conjunction with this, there is an interactive/online element. By going to our website you can vote on which courthouse is your favorite—aesthetically speaking that is.
This is not a vote for the buildings’ value to the community, or the customer services provided by those who work there. It is about everyday curb appeal, pure and simple, which ones are most deserving of public adoration.
How to vote
If you are reading this story in the newspaper, we hope you enjoy the series. But if you want to vote you must go online at texarkanagazette.com. There you can find a direct link in one of the main display windows, or you can click on any of the related courthouse stories for links to the Challenge.
You will also find links to the polling site from our Facebook page, and some of you may find links through Breaking News or Updates we send out through email.
The system that manages the challenge will accept one vote per computer or mobile device. After that, well, there is no after that.
Voting will end at midnight on Dec. 2o.
The top three vote-getters, in reverse order, will be featured in articles from Dec.
28 to Dec. 30.
A week before this announcement, from Dec. 22 to Dec. 24, three other courthouses will be featured, notable buildings that are either outside this region or are no longer active county seats. These are not part of the Courthouse Challenge but we think you will find them interesting. After considering a number of criteria on how to order the sequence of courthouse presentations—including alphabetically, proximity, age, alternating Texas and Arkansas courthouses—lead editors decided to draw names from a cup. Thus, stories are published in the order they were drawn. This is somewhat important because by releasing the courthouse articles day by day, there is some potential of the earlier profiles getting more exposure. Drawing the names doesn’t mitigate that, but it does randomize how any advantage was achieved.
But let’s not got bogged down in the science of polling. This is supposed to be fun.
All the courthouses can be seen at the online polling site. Voting is open now.