The salmon-colored Presidio County Courthouse is similar to Alfred Giles’s design for the (now demolished) El Paso County Courthouse, built the same year. Britton, who was Giles’s contractor for the El Paso courthouse, was awarded the design as well as the construction contract for Presidio’s courthouse. Giles, who also solicited for the job, was commissioned to design the adjacent county jail (1886) at 340 Highland as an apparent consolation.
The three-story brick and stone courthouse (covered in stucco in 1929 and painted a salmon color similar to the original brick color in 2001) is an Italianate design composed of three vertical sections, each topped by a pediment and tied together by stringcourses. Anchoring the building’s corners are Second Empire pavilions with tall mansard roofs with large dormer windows and cast-iron cresting. Cornices, pediments, mansards, and the segmental dome surmounted by a statue of Justice dome are all metal fabrications, common at the time to reduce weight and ensure structural longevity, while simulating stone. The courthouse was rehabilitated in 2002 with funding from the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program.
The two-story jail, to the east, housed prisoners until 1985. It has a recessed entrance loggia with ornate cast-iron columns, buff stucco walls, a white-painted crenellated cornice, and pyramidal corner projections that echo the roof outlines of the courthouse’s corners.