the east side of the second courthouse faced the new adjoining Across from the city and county courthouse was the Battle Monument which replaced the previous first County and Town Courts, later known as the "Courthouse on Stilts" as the 1768 building was temporarily saved from razing when it became necessary to extend Calvert Street further north, so later in 1784, local town builder Leonard Harbaugh erected a new brick/stone foundation under the building resting on arches supporting the building and cut away ground around it enabling the street passage beneath, in the Square at the edge of the cliffs then overlooking the bend of the Jones Falls flowing south to the harbor.

The historic Baltimore County Courthouse is an edifice of limestone and marble, two stories in height and nine bays in length, surrounded by a modest park and square on the east (and north/south) sides; this is landscaped with a variety of flowers and shrubs and small trees, with winding paths and benches.

This center city site was considered for the proposed first monument to honor George Washington, commanding General of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and first President of the United States.

The town lay a cornerstone for the new planned Washington column on Independence Day, July 4, 1814, 15 years after the president's death and during the War of 1812.

This was a few months before the massive military attack by British sea and land forces later that September, when they burned the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Local home owners feared that the unusually tall column proposed might threaten their houses, and the proposed Washington memorial was moved north of the town to "Howard's Woods" on land donated by Col. John Eager Howard, to the west of his mansion on his estate of "Belvidere".

The Battle Monument commemorated Defenders' Day, a city, county, and state official holiday of the British attack on Baltimore.

It was written by poet and lawyer Francis Scott Key, of Frederick and Georgetown, who witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the truce ship Minden anchored downriver on the Patapsco River, probably off Sparrows Point on the north side near the river entrance or the Royal Navy's invasion fleet's landing site at North Point.

Key had been invited by officials and neighbors to try to negotiate the release of William Beanes, a physician from Prince George's County, who was captured by the British.

Key's poem was set to music in a few days at a local Baltimore theatre and neighboring tavern on Holliday Street, and quickly became known as the "Star-Spangled Banner."

Catherine Townson's carved tombstone, the last upright stone remaining in a small family plot, surrounded by several other unmarked relatives' graves, including the connected Shealey family, was recently surrounded in 2014 by the construction of the Towson Square shopping and entertainment development, a four-acre project costing $85 million.

Also buried in the plot is General Nathan Towson, a veteran of the War of 1812 whose reputation increased the profile of the small town in the early 19th century.

Coleman Yellott, a local attorney, delivered the official address and oratory for the occasion, saying: The ceremony which you had assembled to witness, has now been performed.

The Corner Stone of the building has been laid; and soon the edifice itself will rise towards the Heavens, attracting, by the beauty of its proportions and the simple grandeur of its walls, the admiring gaze of every traveler along yonder highway.

The building was completed in 1855 by the builder, William H. Allen, but the first session of the Court was not held until two years later, on January 5, 1857, after a long battle about the land title for the site from Grafton M. Bosley, who owned a large portion of the western side of the town and presented it to the county with a "right-of-way" to it from the Baltimore and York Turnpike.