Located at the eastern terminus of King Street, the jail has two parts: a two-and-one-half-story clapboard front section for an office and housing for the jailer and his family, and a two-story brick rear section for the inmates. The two-part program and the domesticity of the front section typify late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century town jails in Rhode Island. The jail was built in conjunction with the East Greenwich State House, a relationship suggested by the situation of the two buildings at either end of King Street. It was used as a jail as late as 1957.