Cooke County is named for William Gordon Cooke, who was a soldier during the Texas Revolution.
Surrounding County Courthouses:
N – Love County, Oklahoma
E – Grayson County
S – Denton County and Wise County
W – Montague County
Created: March 20, 1848 
County Seat:
Gainesville 1848 – present
County Courthouse – Gainesville
Location: 101 South Dixon Street / California Street
Built: 1910 – 1911
Style: Beaux Arts
Architect: Otto Lang and Frank Mitchell of Dallas and Garrett & Collins
Contractor: M P Kelly
Description: The building faces west and is a three story reddish colored brick and limestone structure. The building is located on landscaped grounds in the center of Gainesville. The building is acruciform-plan building with raised basement. The west and east fronts have a projecting center section with four limestone framed arches on the first story and four columns rising from the second to the top of the third story. The first story is faced with limestone and the top stories are reddish colored brick. On the center of the roof is a large square brick clock tower with rounded copper clad dome. In the interior the corridors from all four entries intersect at an atrium. The atrium is square in plan with chamfered corners, reflecting the tower. At the height of the space is an art glass domed skylight with an abstracted foliate design. Just beneath the skylight is a crown molding and around the top of the atrium walls are vertical decorative moldings suggesting columns, topped by ornate cast “capitals” in a foliate design in the style of Louis Sullivan. A multi-paned window is centered in each wall of the space. At the base of the atrium a semi-circular staircase with marble treads and risers. The building has black and white colored marble. There are courtrooms on the north and south sides of the second story. The building houses the State District Court, Constitutional County Court and County Court at Law. The building was renovated in 2006. The architect was Komatsu Architecture Inc. and the contractor was J C Stoddard Construction.
See: The architect, Otto Lang and Frank Mitchell of Dallas designed similar style courthouses in Johnson County and Scurry County.
History: The county was created in 1848 and Gainesville was selected as the county seat. The first courthouse was a log structure designed and built by Alexander Boutwell and S D Brown in 1850 at a cost of $29 and replaced by the second courthouse, a one story frame courthouse built in 1853 at a cost of $300. The third courthouse was a two story limestone structure built in 1878 to 1880 at a cost of $27,499. The courthouse burned in 1909. The fourth and present courthouse was constructed in 1910 to 1911 at a cost of $150,000. The cost of the 2006 renovation was $7,000,000.
County Courthouse – Gainesville
Photos taken 2009 and 2019