Set on a shady lawn, this two-story, five-bay frame house with exterior-end chimneys of brick has a one-story porch with paired columns. The house has served as a girls' school as well as a Masonic lodge, housed two clerks of the Sussex Court, and was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Southwest of the Banister House is the Old Clerk's Office (1817), the oldest civic building in town. This diminutive one-story, two-bay brick building with a gable roof was just large enough to contain a young county's records.