The Texas Historical Commission’s Historic Courthouse Maintenance Handbook is designed to help facilities directors, maintenance and housekeeping staff, and county officials in Texas maintain over 240 historic courthouse buildings throughout the state. Many of these buildings have been restored through the Historic Texas Courthouse Preservation Program. Both restored courthouses and those that may be restored in the future must undergo regular maintenance to preserve the historic materials and features that make them such important places in our communities. For some counties, budgets and resources for maintenance is generous, but for many, funding is a challenge and necessary (but often deferred) maintenance can become overwhelming. This handbook offers straightforward tools to assist counties in planning and conducting basic cyclical maintenance. If used as intended, this handbook also helps justify maintenance and staffing budgets, supports fundraising efforts for repairs and restoration, offers transparency for money spent, and helps make the case for the importance of maintenance.
The handbook will be available here as webpages in spring 2019, with fillable PDFs and links to resources. For now, download the entire handbook as a PDF below, and check back for more pages coming soon.
The Cyclical Maintenance Tracker is designed to help building maintenance personnel with scheduling inspections and maintenance activities, and making sure they are done on time and in accordance with best practices for each building element. It can also be used to help allocate staff and resources, and help establish reasonable budgets for routine maintenance.
