County Seat – Bay City
Built – 1965
Style – Modern
Architect – Rusty, Martin & Vale
pictures taken – May 25, 2011
see Bay City
Bay City is an old (the port of Matagorda was one of the oldest on the Texas Gulf) and prosperous town (lots of rice farming, some old, etc.), so you might have expected something a little more historic for its courthouse. I’ve no idea what happened with the old 1895 courthouse which paved the way for this modern structure to be placed in the middle of the town square. It just doesn’t see to fit.
The town square is prosperous looking and looks its age (in a good way). The concrete structure that is the courthouse just doesn’t seem to add anything to that ambiance. To add to that disjointed feeling – all of the trees have been stripped of their limbs. There’s got to be a good reason for that, I just don’t know what it is.
Now that I’ve ranted and raved about the courthouse, I do have to say, for a modern structure, it is well conceived and executed. It looks like it belongs on a university campus as the new library or something like that. So it’s not the building itself that gets me – it’s this building in this setting that doesn’t seem to gel. Just my thoughts.