The three-story federal building closes the courthouse square on the north and completes the formal ensemble of buildings. It replaces the earlier post office (AO5) two blocks south. Wyatt Hedrick’s firm, based in Fort Worth, was adept with a style of modernist abstraction. Here, the sole stylistic articulation consists of recessed frames around the vertically stacked windows and flush, fluted pilasters rising three stories beside the entrances. The west lobby contains six murals by Julius Woeltz, executed in 1941 under the sponsorship of the Section of Fine Arts of the U.S. Treasury Department. The murals depict the region’s history and progress from conquistadors to buffalo, cowboys, Indians, cattle shipping, and the oil industry.
A block to the east at 305 SE 5th, the Khiva Temple (1924, Herbert M. Greene) continues the modern classical theme of the civic center with a composition of a horizontally emphasized ground story and the second and third stories embellished vertically with two-story fluted Ionic pilasters.