This large building replaced an earlier courthouse destroyed in the fire of 1872. Its columns, though, survived and were reused here on the portico. Although conforming to the commonwealth's long-standing predilection for red brick courthouses with classical porticos, the building nevertheless proclaimed its late-nineteenth-century modernity with segmental-arched openings crowned with elaborate brick moldings and a wooden cupola with a clock tower covered by a bell-cast roof, popular features at the time. The four-columned central portico's pediment is trimmed with exuberant green-painted foliation, a golden roundel, and diamond motifs set in squares. Many alterations and additions to the courthouse—not all of them harmonious—have greatly enlarged the seven-bay T-shaped building. At its rear, an alarmingly large jail and courtroom/office building replaced the county jail (1905) designed by Henri Doriot of Bristol. The courthouse is positioned on the highest point in town and framed by a low stone wall capped with a late-nineteenth-century iron railing. Instead of its usual placement on the courthouse grounds, the Confederate monument (1914) is a block to the west on Main Street at Church Avenue.