Set far back from the road, this two-story frame house is where the first Franklin County court is thought to have met in 1786. That structure is encased in the present building, which is an example of the simplified Greek Revival popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Its two-tiered pedimented centered portico, a feature that was favored locally, here uses paired Doric piers topped by paired piers without capitals. The center-passage house has three bays but the openings on the first floor have two grouped windows instead of the usual single windows as on the upper story. Nearby, but not visible from the road, is the eighteenth-century Washington Iron Furnace, the heart of Franklin County's early iron industry and once part of this property.