Hood County Courthouse Historic District

Granbury's courthouse square in Hood County, Texas, centers on a three-story limestone courthouse built in 1890-91 to designs by Waco architect W. C. Dodson. Its Second Empire form includes a projecting entrance pavilion, mansard-roofed end pavilions and a central clock tower. Around it stand one- and two-story native limestone commercial buildings, most dating from the 1880s and 1890s. They include the First National Bank of 1883, the Aston-Landers saloon building of 1893, the Nutt brothers' building of 1893, and the 1886 opera house, which hosted traveling vaudeville acts and minstrel shows. A limestone jail of 1885 stands just off the square. The district was recognized because the square has kept its late nineteenth-century character, with no modern buildings breaking the continuity of the rows. The town laid out the square at the center of a twenty-block grid after the county was created in 1866, and local citizens have restored several commercial buildings.