The Leon County Courthouse in Centerville, a two-story Italianate brick building of 1886 and 1887, is the third courthouse on the town square and still serves as the county courthouse. Centerville was laid out in 1850 as a new county seat after Leona, the first, proved inconvenient and failed the legislature's requirement that a seat lie near the centre of its county; the town was named for its location. A frame courthouse went up in 1850 and a brick one in 1858. That building burned in 1885, and the present courthouse was raised on its foundations, built largely of brick salvaged from the fire. The Texas Historical Commission credits the design to William Johnson and the construction to P. G. Gillen of Mississippi.
The building is five bays wide and four deep under a hipped roof, with shallow brick pilasters rising to a corbelled brick cornice, stuccoed chimneys on each side and a small balcony with a cast-iron rail over the entrance. Offices line the ground-floor hall, and the district courtroom takes up most of the second floor, with ceiling fans, original benches and black walnut trim. A 1966 state marker called it one of the oldest Texas courthouses still in its original state.
Centerville stayed small after the International-Great Northern Railroad bypassed it in 1872; it had 318 people in 1900 and 903 in 2000. The square was paved in the 1930s as a Work Projects Administration project, and the courthouse was rehabilitated in 2007 with money from the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program.
Getting there
31.2585, -95.9781
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