Late Victorian
Victorian architecture is a series of architectural revival styles in the mid-to-late 19th century. ''Victorian'' refers to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), called the Victorian era, during which period the styles known as Victorian we ...
style. It features a two-story classical portico crowned with a distinctive three-stage cupola. A one-story addition was built in the 1930s by the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, in ...
. In 1959, extensive renovations were performed on the building.
It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...
in 1979. It is located in the
Pittsboro Historic District
Pittsboro Historic District is a national historic district located at Pittsboro, Chatham County, North Carolina. The district encompasses 131 contributing buildings, 3 contributing sites, and 1 contributing object in the county seat of Pittsb ...
.
A fire on March 24, 2010, did great damage to the building which was in the midst of another renovation. The restored building reopened April 20, 2013 with an exhibit covering Chatham County history on the first floor and a courtroom on the second.
In 1907, the county gave a license to the
United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, ...
to place a statue of a Confederate soldier outside the courthouse. In 2019, the Chatham County Board of Commissioners voted to rescind this license, and the statue was removed as part of the trend toward
removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
More than 100 monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America (CSA; the Confederacy) and associated figures have been removed, all but five since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn do ...