Gonzales County Jail History

Gonzales County, Texas

The Gonzales County Jail is a three-story, tan brick, flat-roofed structure of cruciform plan. The southwest short arm of the cross contains the main entrance in a set back bay. All of the trim is of tan brick.

A wide belt course divides the first story from the upper two stories, which are treated as a unit. The building has a heavy entablature with dentils, and is finished with a brick cornice and solid parapet. Wide brick quoins delineate the corners and inset brick panels are used to mark the division of the second and third stories. There is a paneled end chimney on each of the long arms.

The windows are grouped in sets of four on the long arms of the cross, and in twos on the front and back wings. Most of the fenestrations have brick hood molds, some as pediments, and some segmentally arched or round arched with fan motif and keystone. The upper windows of the long wings of the building have straight lintels. There are rectangular eyebrow windows at the attic level.

A two-story space is located in the interior of the northeast arm where the gallows were once located. All that remains of the gallows is a whole in the ceiling from which the noose was once dropped. Free-standing steel cell blocks on the second and third levels allowed for segregation of prisoners, according to sex and severity of crime.

The Gonzales County Jail, built in 1887, replaced the first jail which was removed in 1885 after 40 years of debate over the need for a new building. The jail has served in its original capacity as a prisoner lock-up on the upper stories, and sheriff and jailer's offices on the first floor since its beginning, but a new County Jail is under construction immediately to the south of the present jail. Because of a lack of heating, cooling, and sanitary facilities, the antiquated jail is limited to temporary detention in its use as a lock-up. Most offenders must be taken to nearby Seguin jail until the new jail is completed.

Gonzales, previous to becoming the county seat of Gonzales County in 1836, was the capital of Empresario Green DeWitt's colony from 1825 to 1836. Major James Kerr, acting for Empresario DeWitt, designed the town in forty-nine blocks with seven public squares forming the shape of a Maltese Cross. The square on which the Jail and Courthouse (see National Register submission for Gonzales County Courthouse, July 10, 1970) are located is the hub of the cross.

The County Commissioner's Court, in 1885, hired Eugene T. Heiner as architect and Henry Kane as contractor to construct the jail. Kane made the bricks for the building at his kiln on the Guadalupe River. The completed structure cost $21,660.20 and was accepted by the County Court on January 28, 1887. It included a gallows, removed in 1951; an underground passage which connected the jail and the courthouse, intended for the transporting of prisoners; and a top floor, built to hold women. Characterized by the formal composition that was considered so essential in the nineteenth century, the Gonzales County Jail is noteworthy for its integral decorative details of the openings and cornice and its cruciform plan. Brick is used in relief to define transverse and round arches over the openings and to form the string course around the building. Providing additional interest, the ornament of the cornice is used skillfully to relieve the austerity of the plain walls.