The state legislature formed Tate County in 1873 and made Senatobia the county seat. County officials solicited designs and chose the plan and specifications submitted by Memphis architect Cook, whose scheme was described in newspapers as “Italian Gothic,” though there is little overtly Gothic or Italian about the building. Cook, born in England, came to New York City in 1853 and moved to Memphis in 1857 to supervise construction of Isaiah Rogers’s addition to the Gayoso Hotel. The courthouse’s round arches, splayed principal entrance, and corbel table at the tower are Romanesque, the battered and tiered buttresses follow English medieval precedents, the rose window with wheel tracery above colonnettes and the convex-curve mansard roof are French, and the jerkinhead roofs are Dutch, while the courtroom features Renaissance Revival detailing in wood. But these disparate parts from multiple sources were well chosen and assembled by a designer who worked in every revival fashion from Italian Renaissance to Egyptian.