Settled in the 1830s, Rolling Fork became the seat of newly formed Sharkey County in 1876. William S. Hull’s design for this two-story tan brick courthouse reveals an architect untrained in classicism struggling to apply the aesthetic lessons of Mississippi’s New Capitol (JM16), then under construction. Classical in its symmetrical massing and pedimented Corinthian portico, it shows its late-nineteenth-century roots in the dormered and towered roof and rusticated base. Additions and interior alterations from 1965, including a one-story boardroom on the south and a jail on the north, have obscured the original cross-hall plan and darkened the rotunda, once lit by the cupola.
The abandoned Yazoo and Mississippi Valley (Y&MV) Railroad bisects the courthouse square. The two-story brick grocery (c. 1940; 82 China Street) on the south side, Sam Sing and Co., recalls the presence of Chinese settlers, who came to the Delta in small numbers beginning in Reconstruction.