Built in 1902, the Beltrami County Courthouse is the most architecturally serious building in Bemidji. It is Richardsonian Romanesque in style — the heavy, rounded arches, rough-cut red sandstone exterior, and corner tower that Henry Hobson Richardson made fashionable in American civic architecture in the 1880s. The building reads as substantial and permanent in a way that most of Bemidji's downtown does not, which makes it stand out clearly on the block.
The courthouse is still functioning as intended: Beltrami County's government operates out of it today. You can walk around the exterior at any time. The stonework and tower are the main draws; the interior is standard government-building territory. For anyone interested in late-19th-century American civic architecture, it is worth a few minutes on your way to or from the lakeshore.