Wilson's distinctive limestone architecture is an enduring legacy of its early town builders. Many downtown commercial buildings reflect the subtle stylistic references typical of rural Kansas town centers, using regional materials like limestone alongside contemporary mass-produced products like cast iron columns. Several notable downtown structures were designed in the late Victorian Italianate style, but the late 19th and early 20th century American Commercial Style is prevalent, incorporating limestone and brick facades of one or two stories and lacking extensive ornamentation, while some newer structures display the Modern style. Prominent buildings that contribute to the city's architectural character include the Lang Memorial Library, a 1923 revival style building with Beaux Arts influences and Italian Renaissance stylistic details; the Downtown Grade School, a 1916 example of period educational architecture with Prairie School influences; the First Presbyterian Church, one of the first brick structures downtown, built in 1910 and heavily influenced by the Romanesque style; the Wilson United Methodist Church, built in 1888, an example of Gothic Revival influence; the Midland Railroad Hotel, a three-story late Victorian limestone structure built in 1899 with influences including Second Empire, Queen Anne, Italianate, and Romanesque; and the Wilson City Jail, a notable 1907 round limestone structure that started as a water tower and later became a jail. Wilson's most notable building was probably the 1901 Turner Hall, also called the Wilson Czech Opera House, a two-story building west of this location whose façade incorporated both Italianate and Queen Anne influences, but it was destroyed by fire in 2009. Most buildings constructed before 1905 were two-story greenhorn limestone structures quarried locally, after 1905 brick began to dominate new development, and in the 1920s commercial architecture shifted toward single-story buildings, so the date of a downtown building's construction can be indicated by its materials or height.