The Italianate-Building was decorated with braced sidewalls, vaguely arched window and door openings, and a bracketed cornice along the roofline.

An unusual accent is added to the structure by the entrance porch in a 5-sided semicircular shape with wooden columns, and a balustrade in a pentagram design.

[3] The National Emergency Recovery Act of the 1930s added a concrete vault and removed the roof's cupola which the authority claimed to be too heavy for the building.

[4] The natives of the fledgling town had mounted a campaign to acquire county seat status less than 2 years after the infant community of Hawthorne was founded as a station on the newly-constructed Carson & Colorado Railroad.

The Legislature also approved the bonds selling to collect funds for managing the cost of construction for a courthouse within a sum which will not exceed 30,000 dollars on 1 March 1883.