Macon was established as the county seat in 1833, and in 1863 it served as the state capital during William Tecumseh Sherman’s occupation of Jackson. The first two courthouses were demolished, and the third burned. This 1952 classical courthouse by the Starkville firm of Johnston, Jones, and Reynolds dominates the square. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive defines the square’s northern edge, and at number 103 stands the T-plan former Noxubee County Jail (1907; pictured), now the public library. Designed by W. S. Hull, the three-and-a-half-story Romanesque Revival building features rich red brick, round-arched openings, steel security bars on the upper-floor windows, a bracketed cornice, and red tile roof. An older county jail (1870) remains behind the courthouse at 503 S. Washington Street. Its facade has been rehabilitated, but the full-width porch is a modern construction.
On the west side of the square, the wooden structure at 508 S. Jefferson (c. 1838) illustrates the local Greek Revival commercial vernacular. It has always been a law office but originally stood farther back on the site.