Unlike most county courthouses in Texas, this one does not occupy the center of a public square, but a corner site at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares. A public square was not included in the town’s plat. The previous courthouse (1874, Thomas Hinkle) was located half a block west until it burned in 1942. Fort Worth–based Withers designed a restrained classical scheme with a raised basement in rusticated dark brown brick and two stories in tawny brick that are capped by a tall white entablature. The central three bays are recessed behind a pair of unfluted Tuscan columns, forming a loggia that is reached by a broad flight of stairs. On the west side, similar stairs arrive at a one-level porch with four small Tuscan columns supporting a deep entablature. The courthouse is barely taller than the two-story commercial buildings along Austin Street, presenting a low-keyed governmental presence unlike Withers’s more exuberant classical works of the time.