Dallas Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Dallas, the Gaston County seat from 1847 to 1911, centers on a shaded, grassy courthouse square surrounded by nineteenth-century commercial and residential buildings. The small stuccoed brick courthouse, rebuilt in 1875 on the walls of the 1847 building after a fire, is reached by a steep double granite stair with a delicate cast-iron balustrade, and it now serves as the town hall. Around the square stand the county jail, the three-story Hoffman Hotel with forty-four rooms, the Rhyne Store, and the vernacular Smyre-Pasour House, all built soon after the town was laid out. Later buildings include the Matthews Hotel, the Wilson-Spargo House and the Setzer General Store. Together they form a well-preserved Greek Revival county seat. The hotel, built for lawyers and judges attending court week, was also used as a student dormitory in the 1880s. The district was listed for its architecture and its record of county government life before the seat moved to Gastonia.