This courthouse’s incongruous appearance of a Romanesque castle with classical porticos was the result of several building periods. The three-story, rock-faced limestone Second Empire core was built in 1886. It was “modernized” in 1932 with the replacement of the mansard roof and tower by a small cupola (removed in the 1950s), north and south additions that mimicked the rock-faced stonework and round-arched windows of the 1886 original, and wide east and west pedimented porticos, each with four pairs of Ionic columns, and flanked by four-stage crenellated towers. The courthouse was rehabilitated and the cupola reconstructed in 2012 with funding from the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program. Hamilton was established in 1858, the same year as the county.