The Commonwealth of Virginia built the most important of the remaining early structures as the resort's bathhouse. Parlors and retiring rooms were contained in the two-story central block, while thirty-two individual baths, each with its own dressing room, were in long onestory wings: twelve baths for ladies in the northwest wing, twenty for gentlemen in the southeast wing.
Built of brick, the building has rudimentary Greek Revival details. Tuscan porches extending in front of the wings have laurel-wreath decorations over every other column. The bathhouse was remodeled in the 1930s and 1940s and converted into guest rooms, but several of the brick-lined baths, each 4 feet by 6 feet and 3 feet deep, remain below the current floor level.
The name President's Cottage is a twentiethcentury appellation honoring U.S. presidents who may have come to Capon Springs. As far as is known, only one sitting president took the waters: Franklin Pierce, in 1854.