It features a tetrastyle Tuscan order portico with whitewashed stuccoed columns. It is based on plans supplied by Thomas Jefferson and is a prototype for numerous Roman Revival court buildings erected in Virginia in the 1830s and 1840s. Also on the property is a two-story, three-bay, brick office building used as a law office and a late Victorian Clerk's office, with a distinctive entrance tower and arched entrance.[3]
Joseph R. Holmes, a delegate to the 1868 Virginia Constitutional Convention, was murdered outside the courthouse in 1869. He and fellow delegate Edward Nelson, who testified about the murder, were both Republicans and African American.[4]
