James Riely Gordon

James Riely Gordon (1863 to 1937), named in many records as J. Riely Gordon, was an American architect who designed at least eighteen county courthouses in Texas during a Texas career of less than twenty years, along with commercial buildings, houses and the territorial capitol of Arizona.¹ Several of his courthouses have since been restored with state grants.²³

Early life and training

Gordon was born at Winchester, Virginia, on August 2, 1863, the son of George Muir Gordon, a civil engineer, and Sarah Virginia (Riely) Gordon. The family moved to San Antonio in 1874.¹ After studying with his father he learned applied engineering on the International and Great Northern railroad, then studied architecture with W. K. Dobson and J. N. Preston and worked in the Washington office of the supervising architect of the United States.¹ His first major commission was supervising construction of the federal courthouse and post office in San Antonio, built from 1886 to 1889.¹

Practice in Texas

He kept his main office in San Antonio from 1884 to 1900 and worked from Dallas from 1900 to 1902, with other offices in Texas, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and in Phoenix, Arizona.¹ His Texas Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1892 and 1893 won a medal of merit.¹ Outside the state his most important building is the Arizona Capitol, designed for the territorial government and built between 1898 and 1900.¹

Much of his commercial work is gone. The San Antonio Conservation Society saved the fronts of the Staacke and Stevens buildings, the Riverside Building was adapted for new uses, and of his Dallas buildings only the John Deere structure survives.¹ The Handbook of Texas judges the Nolte National Bank at Seguin, of 1896, the best preserved of all his works.¹

Courthouses

The Handbook traces a progression in his courthouse designs: from an eclectic Moorish manner, to a Romanesque close to the work of Henry Hobson Richardson, and in his last Texas years to a Classical or Beaux Arts idiom.¹ It cites the courthouses of Wise and Ellis counties as the Romanesque at its best, and those of Harrison and McLennan counties as outstanding examples of the later manner.¹ In 1984, twelve of his Texas courthouses were still standing, in Bexar, Comal, Ellis, Erath, Fayette, Gonzales, Harrison, Hopkins, Lee, McLennan, Victoria and Wise counties, and ten still served their first purpose.¹

The Fayette County Courthouse at La Grange, of 1891, was built around an open central atrium that let in air and daylight and once held a fountain, cast iron sculpture and tropical plants; the space was later closed in for vaults and offices and reopened during a restoration completed in March 2005.³ The Harrison County Courthouse at Marshall was his first Neoclassical Beaux Arts courthouse in Texas, designed in 1899 and built of yellow brick and Lueders limestone with colossal pink granite columns.⁴ At Waco the McLennan County Courthouse, completed in 1902, follows a cruciform plan with a rotunda at the crossing and a dome topped by a statue of Themis.⁵⁶

The wider story of the county courthouse as a Texas building type is set out in the Texas county courthouses overview.⁵ His courthouses for Ellis, Fayette and Harrison counties appear on the list of courthouses restored under the grant program described in the entry on the Texas Historical Commission, as does the Dallas County courthouse of 1892 discussed in the article on Old Red.²³⁴⁷

On this site the courthouse essays take up his work from several angles: the building campaign of his years is examined in James Riely Gordon and the Courthouse Boom, and the towers that crowned such buildings in an essay on courthouse clocks.

Later life

At the start of 1903 Gordon moved his practice to New York, where he served thirteen terms as president of the New York Society of Architects.¹ He married Mary Lamar Sprigg of Virginia on October 9, 1889. He died after a stroke at Pelham Heights, New York, on March 16, 1937. His records, plans and other papers are held at the University of Texas at Austin.¹ Other architects and buildings are listed in the reference index.

References

1. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Gordon, James Riely. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

2. Texas Historical Commission, Restored Historic Courthouses. ↩ ↩²

3. Texas Historical Commission, Fayette County Courthouse. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Texas Historical Commission, Harrison County Courthouse. ↩ ↩²

5. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, County Courthouses. ↩ ↩²

6. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, The 1902 McLennan County Courthouse in Waco, Texas. ↩

7. Texas Historical Commission, Ellis County Courthouse. ↩