Completed in 1879, Oglethorpe County's jail was intended by local leaders to be a striking public building, and its elegant Italianate design featured arched windows, granite quoins, and bracketed cornices. It was planned to be well ventilated and was one of the first buildings in the county equipped with running water. Lumber, brick, and granite used in its construction came from within a few miles of the site. The jail originally contained seven cells with plaster walls like those in Lexington's finest houses. Usually only a few prisoners were held there at one time while awaiting trials held two to three times a year in the county courthouse. The sheriff brought meals prepared by his wife twice daily, and between those visits prisoners were usually unsupervised and allowed to walk the halls for exercise, so escapes were frequent. People convicted of minor crimes served their sentences on chain gangs rather than in the jail. In 1935, modern steel cells were installed to curb escapes. In the early 1970s, after the sheriff's office moved upstairs, guards began supervising prisoners continuously, and the building received new plumbing, heating, alarms, and a fire sprinkler system. Several additions were built onto the rear, nearly the entire lot was paved, and many former windows were bricked in or replaced by doors. When crowding became a problem in the 1990s, the county soon decided to build a new jail outside Lexington. The last prisoners left in May 2007, and in the following years Historic Oglethorpe County and the county government removed most twentieth century additions and clutter to restore the building's nineteenth century appearance. Today it again stands as an elegant building reflecting Oglethorpe County's pride in its public architecture.