The citizens of Mount Pleasant built the first brick-and-stone courthouse in Iowa between the years 1839 and 1840. It was a handsome late-Federal-style building which conveyed the feeling that it was a large dwelling rather than a public building. Its walls were of brick and its low-pitched hipped roof was broken at the wall edge by four chimneys. In size it was 24 feet square and two stories in height. It was to have had a cupola, but this was never built. This building was demolished in 1871, and a nearby commercial building was remodeled for county governmental purposes. In 1914 a new courthouse was erected, designed by the Urbana, Illinois, architect J. W. Rower. In style, it is Beaux-Arts Classical, appreciably simplified. The principal pedimented entrance was set between four engaged Tuscan columns. The two-story building on a raised basement is sheathed in smooth surfaced limestone, with the exception of the basement podium, where the horizontal joints of the masonry are deeply cut.