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In contrast to most Iowa courthouses, the Webster County Courthouse stands directly on a downtown corner and has no open space around it. The architect took this into account in a classic Beaux-Arts manner by using horizontally lined rusticated walls penetrated by the entrances on the ground floor, and by providing a recessed central colonnade on the second level. He reserved his finest design efforts for the clock tower, which, with its shingled base, seemingly grows out of the roof. Each of the four clock faces is framed and pedimented, and the small dome of the tower is broken on each face by low, opencurved dormers.