The Austin-based firm of Jacob L. Larmour (1822–1901) and Arthur Osborn Watson (1864–1935) was commissioned to design the Romanesque Revival courthouse to replace a short-lived Italianate model that burned in 1892. Completed after the 1892 breakup of the firm, the courthouse was apparently designed by Watson, as it carries features found in his later work, and only his name appears on the cornerstone.
The smooth walls of locally fired buff brick are highlighted by rock-faced and smooth-cut tan granite quoins, voussoirs, and window frames. Projecting central entrance bays on each side of the typical cruciform plan have a tall arched window and shallow balcony on the second story and a gable with a circular window. Three of the projecting corner bays are each capped with a third floor and pyramidal roofs, and the fourth corner has a tower with a mansard roof with clock faces and pinnacles and concludes with a square tempietto and concave slate roof. Cornices and roof details on the tower are sheet metal, formed and painted to match the building’s lower stone walls. This tower is one of the most dominant and robust on any Texan county courthouse. The courthouse was rehabilitated in 2002 with funding from the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program.
On the northeast corner of the square is the statue of a Confederate Soldier designed by J. K. Finlay (1849–1938), a Scottish immigrant stonemason and pioneer of the local granite industry, and carved in 1916 by his sons. The World War I monument on the southeast corner is by Frank Teich, another granite entrepreneur, who opened a granite quarry in 1900.