The present courthouse replaced the earlier, much remodeled 1859 courthouse. It represents the effort frequently encountered after World War II to produce a design that was both traditional and modern. The Davenport firm of Soenke and Wayland devised a single low, horizontal two-story box whose facades make a slight nod toward Beaux-Arts Classicism. At the front the architects brought the center section out ever so slightly, emphasized the entrance by a frame with a composition of three small windows above, and then in the fashion of the 1920s and 1930s treated the upper and lower windows and their spandrels as narrow vertical bands. They also suggested that the building has a traditional horizontal base, and a termination above of a false cornice carried below the upper parapet.