Courthouse Square Bandstand - 1933 - Glen Rose, TX
N 32° 14.110 W 097° 45.335
14S E 617245 N 3567181
The 1933 Courthouse Square Bandstand stands on the grounds of the historic Somervell County Courthouse at 101 NE Barnard St, Glen Rose, TX.
Waymark Code: WM1224C
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/06/2020
Views: 7
The bandstand is a contributing structure to the Glen Rose Downtown Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and their Registration Form (see Website) provides some good reading:
The Courthouse Square Bandstand is an octagonal concrete and stone structure with an octagonal wooden roof constructed in 1933 in Bungalow/Craftsman style to shelter the town band in Glen Rose, Texas, during public performances. The eight sides of the structure average 8 feet in length. The balustrades on seven sides of the structure were poured integrally with the walls, the outside of which is ornamented with inset pieces of local petrified wood, other
fossils, and attractive rock specimens. Four concrete steps lead pedestrians up to the concrete floor of the structure. The exterior wall on the west side of the bandstand features a three-toed fossilized footprint of a theropod, one of the prehistoric dinosaurs that left other such tracks in local limestone strata. Adjacent to the fossilized footprint lie two marble plaques also set into the masonry. One of these plaques identifies C.M. Sellars as the contractor for the construction project in 1933, while the second plaque lists the volunteer members of the Glen Rose community band at that time.
Town and village bands abounded in America during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Glen Rose was one of the localities in which music played a substantial role in community life. During the 1920s and 1930s, J.F. Allen organized a town band for Glen Rose in which several members of his family performed. Frequently they played concerts for the public on the courthouse square, but they had no shelter for such gatherings. Taking advantage of donated materials and labor, contractor C.M. Sellars erected this bandstand on the eastern side of the square. Already other people in Glen Rose had used locally occurring petrified wood to their ornament homes and places
of business, so it is not surprising that this material found its place in the outside of the walls in this eight-sided concrete
structure. Paleontologists give scientific names to both prehistoric animals and to their tracks. The type specimen for Eubrontes glenrosensis, the fossilized track of the theropods, is the very example placed in 1933 into the wall of the bandstand on the Somervell Courthouse Square, so this track in itself is of significance in the scientific community of paleontologists.