The four buildings and their respective lots occupy an area of a quarter-acre, or a thousand square meters, most of which is covered by their footprints, at 207–231 Bank Street.

A block to the west are the five public and private buildings, including City Hall, originally designed by Cass Gilbert as the Waterbury Municipal Center Complex.

This four-story building is the only one of the four to have its west (front) facade in brownstone, done in a rough surface with granite trim, per its Richardsonian Romanesque styling.

All upper levels are fenestrated with two bays of paired windows, quoined at the sides, in modern one-over-one double-hung sash.

That feature, its generally irregular juxtapositions of shapes and forms and its heavily decorated facade mark it as a rare commercial application of the Queen Anne Style, much more commonly used for houses during its peak period in the late 19th century.

Ionic pilasters with fluted necks and intricately carved panels with a foliate motif above the middle support a stone lintel.

Below the third- and fourth-story windows are terra cotta panels with a festoon carving in the middle surrounded by bead and reel, a motif that continues in the pilaster capitals.

[1] From large foot scrolls on the arch tops spring the three pilasters that frame the two recessed 16-pane windows in each of the gabled dormers that pierce the roof, finished in fish-scale slate.

Two skylit staircases, with turned balusters and newels and a curved molded handrail rise to the upper story in the front and rear.

[1] The southernmost of the group at 229–231 Bank Street, the Republican is named after one of Waterbury's daily newspapers at the time, one of the papers that merged to form the present-day Republican-American, which used it as an office.

It is the shortest of the buildings, faced in brick at three and a half stories tall, four bays wide, in an eclectic mix of styles.

[4] Its modern storefront features fluted and paneled pilasters around the main entrance and a lintel with applied geometric designs.

In the center of the third story is a three-part semicircular window set in a splayed-brick arch, its middle section two-over-two sash.

It starts with a band of terra cotta panels in alternating circular and foliate motifs between sawtooth brick courses.

The city's growth made them realize that downtown would continue to expand and that the lots would be better developed as commercial property.

[1] Henry C. Griggs, cofounder of the Smith and Griggs Manufacturing Company and a two-term member of the Connecticut General Assembly, which made small items like corset fasteners from the brass the city produced in great abundance, sold part of his lot to Republican editor J. Henry Morrow in 1883.

The corbelling and terra cotta panels are typical Victorian decorations, while the fanlight and fenestration anticipate the Colonial Revival style by a few decades.

He hired Robert W. Hill, a former student of Henry Austin who was one of Waterbury's most accomplished architects of the time, with many public buildings around Connecticut to his credit.

They hired Joseph A. Jackson, the son of an Irish immigrant carpenter who had studied under Hill and become another of Waterbury's leading architects.

The rough stone facing and round arches are typical of the Romanesque Revival style popular at the time, as interpreted by Henry Hobson Richardson.

The Georgian Revival structure he designed for his neighbor is an exemplary modest commercial effort, with its brick facing, small-pane windows and classically inspired cornice typifying a style he did not usually work in.

[5] At the time the district was listed on the Register in the early 1980s, a billboard was on the outside of the fourth floor of the Griggs building; it has since been removed.