Concho County Courthouse

In 1842 Henry Francis Fisher and Burchard Miller received a contract for colonization of the Concho area, but it was still under the domination of the Apache and no important settlement was made until the 1870s. Concho County was attached to McCulloch County for judicial purposes until its incorporation on March 11, 1879. Paint Rock became the county seat although in 1880 it only had a population of 100 persons. On October 5, 1885, the commissioners' court received bids for the construction of the first permanent courthouse in Concho County. Plans and specifications for a two-story building of native stone in the Second Empire style were prepared by architect F.E. Ruffini of Austin and accepted by the county. J.B. Kane and John Cormack under the firm name of Kane and Cormack Contractors and Builders posted a bond for $20,000 and entered into a contract with Concho County to furnish materials and labor in the construction of a new courthouse. Bonds for $28,000 at 8% interest were issued to fund the project. In the meantime, F.E. Ruffini had died and on October 29, 1885, his brother, architect Oscar Ruffini of San Angelo, was named by the commissioners' court as supervising architect.

The brothers Ruffini were both prominent in Texas architecture during the later part of the nineteenth century. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to immigrant parents, they received their architectural training in firms in Ohio and Indiana. In 1876, F.E. Ruffini opened an office in Austin, where two years later he was joined by his brother. Before becoming established in Austin, Oscar worked for a time in the firm of E.E. Myers of Detroit, Michigan, the architect of the Texas state capitol. In 1884, Oscar moved to San Angelo.