36 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • March/April 2018 TheCoastalBend.com N ueces County’s first census in 1850 revealed a population of 689, though the seaside county seat, Corpus Chris- ti, welcomed thousands of coastal visitors and traders in a given year. In 1853, the first county commission voted to designate a city block for a new courthouse and jail, which fronted Mesquite St., bordered by Beldon to the north and Aubrey St. (now IH-37) to the south. The original courthouse was a dra- matic structure that featured a tall and wide second floor balcony facing the bay, and that was fed by dra- matic staircases on each of its sides, which fanned glo- riously to the sidewalk below. By the turn of the 20th Century, an administrative addition was added to the south end of the courthouse, but as the county and city of Corpus Christi continued to grow in the 1900’s, a new structure more than three times the size of the first courthouse was approved. Washington, D.C., architect, Harvey T. Page, cre- ated a look for the new courthouse that exuded power and authority, designed in the Classical Revival style that dominated the era. Bold columns, a soaring porch entrance, and accent sculptures resembling ancient Greece or Rome, established an atmosphere of gran- deur for those who entered the building for the first time. The jail was located inside, as well as the gallows. Just five years after it opened, the courthouse served as a shelter, and eventually a morgue, during the Hur- ricane of 1919, in which almost 1,000 people died. In 1974 a new, modern courthouse was approved at a new location, on Leopard Street uptown, and in 1977 the old courthouse was vacated. Later it was des- ignated a historical building by the State of Texas, pro- tecting it for fifty years, until 2027. Where the 1914 Nueces County Courthouse is concerned, the ensuing thirty years should be looked at as a period of shame and disappointment—equal to the Columbus Ships de- bacle, but that’s another story. It took about twenty years for the county to put a chain-link fence around it and a few signs warning against trespassing. Over the 1980’s, the once majestic symbol of law and order that served our community for 63 years, was left on its own. No one cared, except for the vandals, drug ad- dicts, vagrants and ghost hunters who were its most frequent guests. An architectural group took it over in the 2000’s and actually started work on the southern façade of the building but ran out of money and gave it back to the county in 2007. Alas, hope returned for the restoration of down- town’s longest standing, dilapidated eyesore (now beating out the Memorial Coliseum by almost a de- cade), when a fair citizen of Flour Bluff took a picture on her phone of the 1914 courthouse and texted it to her dad, who worked for an Ohio-based construction company that specializes in restoring historical build- ings. By the end of 2016, the company’s owner formed a partnership with a Fort Worth-based financier to de- velop a plan for the building, and in April 2017 they signed a purchase agreement with the Nueces County Commissioners Court in a press event led by County Judge Loyd Neal. The group agreed to buy the 1914 courthouse for $1,000, plus $1.5 million in back taxes owed by the last owner who failed to develop it, and announced that construction could start within a year on Corpus Christi’s newest bay front gem, likely a luxu- ry, full service hotel. And then…(here it comes) The headline for a January 4, 2018, story in the Corpus Christi Caller Times read, “Proposed federal tax overhaul created uncertainty about old courthouse project.” The operative and hope-saving term being the past-tense, “created,” as the story went on to explain Where the 1914 Nueces County Courthouse is concerned, the ensuing thirty years should be looked at as a period of shame and disappointment—equal to the Columbus Ships debacle.