 Designed by architect Otto H. Matz and completed in 1893, it replaced and reused material from the earlier 1874 criminal courthouse at this site, designed by Armstrong & Egan, (the location of the trial and hangings related to the Haymarket Affair).The complex included in addition to the successive courthouses, the Cook County Jail, and a hanging gallows for prisoners sentenced to death.By the 1920s the attached jail, which was behind the courthouse and no longer exists, had a capacity for 1200 inmates but sometimes housed twice that and the court rooms were backlogged with cases.