Morris County Courthouse built to be practical
Vote in Gazette’s Courthouse Challenge
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth installment in the Courthouse Challenge series. From now until Dec. 20, you can vote on the best looking courthouse in the region online at texarkanagazette.com. This Challenge is not paywall protected. Subscribers and nonsubscribers can go to the polling page and vote.)
Dedicated in June 1973, the Morris County Courthouse in Daingerfield, Texas, is a modern brick-and-concrete building that followed the county’s original 1882 courthouse, now used for office space.
The courthouse is a practical building that serves its purposes well, said Sherry Ray, secretary to the county judge.
The architectural firm Pierce, Pace and Associates designed the building, one of four Texas county courthouses it designed between 1964 and 1973, according to 254texascourthouses.net . The others are in Baylor, Culberson and Zavala counties.
The courthouse originally had a flat roof. A pitched roof and gables were later added, presumably to improve drainage.
It houses the offices of the county clerk, treasurer, auditor, tax assessor/collector, district clerk, district attorney, county judge and commissioners court.
Also in the building are a district
court, Department of Public Safety driver’s license office, a veterans’ services office and adult and juvenile probation offices.
Morris County was demarked from Titus County on March 13, 1875, and probably named for William W. Morris, a 19th-century district judge and state legislator from the area, according to the Handbook of Texas Online. The county was organized on May 12, 1875, with Daingerfield as the county seat.
With a surface area of 164,000 acres, Morris County is one of the smallest counties in the state. The census counted 13,200 people living in Morris County in 1990, 13,048 in 2000 and 12,743 in
2014.
The Morris County Courthouse is at 500 Broadnax St. in Daingerfield.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Texarkana Gazette and texarkanagazette.com will present one courthouse a day (14 in all) until Dec. 18. At our website you can vote on the best looking courthouse. There you will 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. The top three vote-getters, in reverse order, will be featured in articles from Dec. 28 to Dec. 30. A week before this announcement, 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. All the courthouses in the Challenge can be seen at the online polling site.)