History

Travis County’s first purpose-built courthouse was a modest two-story stone structure built in 1855 near Republic Square in downtown Austin. It was replaced by a Second Empire limestone building in 1876 — a three-story monumental structure built along the south side of the Texas State Capitol — which itself became inadequate as Austin grew through the early twentieth century. In 1930, the county selected a site on the north side of Wooldridge Park for a larger building. The cornerstone was laid in 1930, and on June 27, 1931, the courthouse opened its doors; the county’s courts and offices moved in from the old building, which continued as state office space before its demolition in 1964.

The building was designed in PWA Moderne — a stripped, geometric variant of Art Deco that emerged from the Depression-era Public Works Administration’s preference for severe, unornamented civic architecture. Page Brothers applied this vocabulary to a building that needed to project permanence and authority on a tight civic budget. Substantial additions in 1958 and 1962 expanded the facility as Travis County’s population grew.

The courthouse carries a second history in its name. Heman Marion Sweatt was an African American mail carrier who applied to the University of Texas School of Law in 1946 and was refused admission solely on the basis of race. The legal battle — Sweatt v. Painter — reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Sweatt’s favor in 1950, ordering the University of Texas to admit him and delivering a precedent that helped dismantle separate-but-equal in graduate education. The courthouse was renamed in his honor to mark his place in Texas and American civil rights history.