Lamar County Courthouse, Part XI

For those of you just joining us or for those of you who do not want to wade back through my blog for the previous parts of this renovation series, I have provided links for your lazy tails here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V (The Big Momma- where I photograph the inside for the first time) Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX and Part X. As always, you can click on any of the photos in this blog to enlarge them.

My daily drive past the courthouse on Friday morning drew a SQUEEEEEE from me when my eyes beheld this sight:

They have STARTED THE CLOCKTOWER!!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! You can see the rest of the clock tower dome in front of the courthouse on the ground.

In the photo above, you can see two steel rods sticking up out of the roof of the building in front of the base of the clocktower. This repeats on all eight sides of the roof to that there is 16 steel rods sticking up. Some kind of architectural detail will be going on the edge there, we can only wait and see what it is. Hopefully a replica of the decorative railings that were there previously.

Here is the dome that will go on top of the base that is already installed on the roof above:

And behind it is the cupola for the top:

In the photo above you can also see the round bases that will frame the clocks to the right of the cupola above. See below. So excited!!

They’ve also added… I have no idea what to call this. The base that goes all the way around the outside bottom of the building wasn’t on the black bump outs yet but they’ve added it now. Looks like the originals were made of cement but I don’t think the new additions are. You can see it at the bottom of the photo around the bed of the pickup truck. They’ve also moved the white Ionic columns that were inside laying on the first floor outside to wrap the around the steel beams.

They’ve power washed all of the peeling paint from the front porch, columns and steps so that all of it can be repainted.

On the other side of the building, they’re bricking over the black bump out to match the rest of the building. You can see it through the scaffolding they’ve put up around it and only lack the front before they’ll be done on this side. The sun was in the way for these shots so they’re not so great.

It’s coming together very well. They’re putting more details into the brick work on the bump outs that the wings built in the ‘50’s do not have but that matches the details on the original building. I’m hoping this will make the ‘50’s wings look less tumor-like.