It is housed in an 1895 Renaissance Revival building that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

The original building is a single-story masonry structure, built out of gold-colored bricks and covered by a hip roof.

It has a three-part front facade, whose defining element is a central projecting hip-roof section.

Nash died in 1894, having purchased land for the library building, but made no further steps toward creating the institution.

In his will, he dedicated $10,000 for the construction of a building, and left the residue of his estate as an endowment for its maintenance.