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Ellis County History  Ellis County Courthouse

1863

Born Winchester, Virginia. After the Civil War, Gordon's father worked in Washington, D. C. as a civil engineer.

1874

The family moved to San Antonio.

1879 – 1880

Gordon worked for the Civil Engineering Corps of the 1880 International and Great Northern Railway.

1881 – 1882

Gordon apprenticed in the architectural office of W. K. Dobson of San Antonio, not with Dodson of Waco as is often reported.

1887

Gordon established his own independent practice in San Antonio.

1888 – 1889

Supervised construction of the United States Post Office and Courthouse in San Antonio.

1890

The Staake Bros. Building in San Antonio completed. Gordon joins the Texas State Association of Architects (founded 1886).

1890 – 1891

Gordon established a partnership with D. E. Laub of San Antonio.

1891

Gordon won the competition for the Bexar County Courthouse which was built 1892-6.

Married Mary Lamar Sprigg of San Antonio.

1892

Waco natatorium

Kalteyer Residence, San Antonio

Won the competition for the Texas Pavilion for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1894

Cotton Palace, Waco, which burned the same year.

1894 – 1896

Ellis County Courthouse, Waxahachie.

1896 – 1898

St. Paul's Sanitarium, Dallas (demolished 1968)

Linz Building, Dallas (demolished 1963)

1897

Gordon won the competition for the Mississippi State Capitol, but was soon dismissed by the governor for his leadership in a movement to restrict the competition to AIA members only.

1898

Won the competition for the Arizona Territorial Capitol in Phoenix on which he worked for the next two years.

1900 – 1902

McLennan County Courthouse, Waco

Carnegie Library, San Antonio

1902

Vicksburg, Mississippi City Hall completed.

Gordon moves to New York to become the partner of Alfred Zucker, designer of the well-known Hotel Majestic and Progress Club and one of Manhattan's most prolific architects in the last ten years of the previous century. Gordon, with Zucker, designs the Wilkinson, Mississippi, County Courthouse.

1904

Zucker skips the country for as yet unknown reasons. Lives out the rest of his life in Montevideo.

1905

Gordon enters into partnership with Evarts Tracy and Egerton Swartwout.

1906 – 1907

Gordon takes a tour of Europe. His itinerary includes France Italy and Germany.

1907

Partnership with Tracy and Swartwout dissolved. Gordon once again begins practice on his own.

1909 – 1911

Gordon designs the mammoth Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, New Jersey, the best realized of his Beaux-arts courthouses.

1913

Gordon is invited to participate in the New York County Courthouse Competition along with McKim, Mead, & White and Cass Gilbert. Although Gordon's design--a later one than the columns of justice scheme-- receives acclaim in the New York papers, Guy Lowell's circular design was selected.

1914 – 1924

Design and construction of the Cambria County Courthouse, Ebensburg, Pennsylvania.

1915

Elected to his first of thirteen terms as president of the New York Society of Architects.

1922 – 1924

Gordon designs the Cortland County, New York, Courthouse, Jail, and World War I Veterans Memorial.

1929

Appointed chairman of the Architects' joint Committee to prepare a new building code for the City of New York.

Declined another term as president of the N. S. A. Appointed permanent honorary president.

1931

Member of the Advisory Committee for revising the New York Multiple Dwelling Law.

1932 – 1933

Instrumental in 'Writing the Code of Professional Practice and Schedule of Minimum Charges of the New York Society of Architects.

1936 – 1937

Served on the New York Building Safety Committee.

1937

Died at his home in Pelham Heights, New York, after a brief illness. Age 73.

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