When the segregationist sign was uncovered, county commissioners debated what to do with it and decided to keep it, adding a plaque for historical context. In 2013, Commissioner John Wiley Price offered $15,000 of his district’s budget to turn the fountain into an art piece that projected newsreel footage from the Civil Rights Movement whenever someone would take a drink.in 2016. The installation was removed and placed in storage.
But by the turn of the 21st century, the buildings had begun to decay. Outdated electrical and plumbing systems. Rusting jail cells that once housed Dallas County’s death row and infamous inmates like Jack Ruby and Clyde Barrow. Rats, asbestos and lead paint throughout. The team walked every hall, every stairwell, peeked into every room, taking photographs and video of details —from transom design to doorknobs — to preserve as much character from the old building as possible.
In some parts of the newly renovated building, you can still see the horizontal lines where the floors of the historic buildings don’t line up, but they’re all connected now. As construction continued, Manno said, other historic relics were uncovered. On the fourth floor, they removed old carpeting and found a terrazzo floor with a huge Texas star. On the ground level, a construction worker scraped white paint from a wall to find original marble from the early 20th century. Behind one wall was a huge safe that had been bricked over decades ago.
He points to a hallway on the sixth floor that was once the alley between the courthouse and records buildings: The two brick walls lining the hallway are each a different color and were once exterior walls. He points to the ground level, where 1920s terrazzo floors were uncovered under layers of 1970s epoxy: A seam through the floor shows where there was once an elevator shaft that’s now part of the main lobby.
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