The Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse on Guadalupe Street could undergo historic restoration in the coming years with state funding assistance.
Earlier this week, the Travis County Commissioners Court voted unanimously to allocate $100,000 toward hiring a historic preservation architect to draft a preservation plan for the structure, which was built in the 1930s.
That plan is the initial document needed to kick off the application for the courthouse to qualify for funding from the Texas Historical Commission’s program to preserve historically significant courthouses throughout the state.
In 2005, the courthouse was named after Heman Marion Sweatt. He was a Black man who – before the U.S. Supreme Court and with the help of attorney Thurgood Marshall – successfully challenged the language in the Texas Constitution that prohibited racially integrated education. Sweatt’s case began after he was denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law.
While historically significant, the courthouse currently is ineligible for state funding, because it does not have a valid and approved preservation plan on file with the state.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Amy McWhorter, managing director of economic development and strategic planning for Travis County, said a draft plan was submitted to the historical commission in 2016. But it was never revised for approval, because county staff became preoccupied with the opening of the new Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facility.
Allocating the money now for a historic architecture firm will allow the county to complete the preservation plan in time for the historical commission’s next grant cycle in 2024. If approved, the county could apply for a grant for planning and design work, with a follow-up grant for construction costs possible in 2026.
The commission’s grants are capped at either $10 million or 2 percent of the program’s biennial funding – whichever is greater.
With the funding approved, the county will conduct a request-for-qualifications process to find architectural and engineering firms able to specialize in preservation work.
County commissioners praised the plan to make improvements to the facility, with Commissioner Jeff Travillion placing extra significance on the role Sweatt played in the Civil Rights Movement.
“This is really a prominent and an important issue, because Heman Sweatt is the person who effectively desegregated public institutions of higher learning in 1946, and while he was forced to be admitted to the law school, he took classes in the basement of the Texas General Land Office. So there is a lot of history there,” he said.
Travillion continued, “It’s important that we document what has happened there, but we also just put in place an African American historical commission, which has a lot of the people with the credentials that can be helpful. If there’s an opportunity to focus on the relevant history and to make that a more important space that the youth of our community understand, very similar to what’s going on in the Palm District, we want to make sure that the youth understand what that was and its historical context.”
After asking clarifying questions of staff regarding the process and approvals needed in the future, as well as what opportunities the commissioners would have to make decisions on the preservation effort, Commissioner Ann Howard voiced her support.
“We should use community assets like this to serve the people today in a way that denotes respect to the past, but not just create a museum to the past,” she said. “To me, it’s a living place, and it should be of service.”
Photo by Larry D. Moore, made available through a Creative Commons license.
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historic preservation: Official actions of a municipality such as the City of Austin taken to preserve structures with their jurisdiction. Preservation is often accompanied by a property tax exemption.
Travis County Commissioners Court: The legislative body for Travis County. It includes representatives from the four Travis County Precincts, as well as the County Judge. The County Judge serves as the chair of the Court.
