Hillsborough County Courthouses in Tampa — Tampa, Florida

The county's courts have moved through at least six buildings in downtown Tampa since Hillsborough County was created on January 25, 1834. Hillsborough County records a small log cabin courthouse lost during the Second Seminole War, a two-story replacement built by Capt. James McKay in 1847, the red brick courthouse with a silver dome completed in 1892, a courthouse built in 1952, and the George E. Edgecomb Courthouse, which opened in 2004. A 1972 marker from the Tampa Historical Society adds courthouses built on the old square in 1848 and 1855.

For most of that history the courts stood on a single downtown block. The Tampa Historical Society inscription, recorded by the Historical Marker Database, says that for 104 years Courthouse Square was the official site of executive and judicial government for Hillsborough County. USF Libraries describes that square as the area bounded by Madison Street, Franklin Street, Lafayette Street (now Kennedy Boulevard) and Florida Avenue in the heart of Tampa.

Modest, and fragile. The 1972 marker says the first courthouse was a log building that possibly stood on the Tampa square and was burned in 1836. Hillsborough County's history places that loss during the Second Seminole War and notes that when the first county commissioners met in 1846, a new courthouse and jail were already on their agenda alongside taxes, transportation and downtown development. That year the county tax raised $148.69, and commissioners earned $2 per day while in session.

The courthouse served very few people at first. Hillsborough County reports a population of just 836 in 1834, not counting soldiers or Native Americans, and says most residents lived in the village of Tampa while the rest of the sprawling county was sparsely settled. Florida did not become a state until 1845, eleven years after the county was organized, so the first Tampa courthouse was a territorial institution.

The commissioners approved courthouse plans in 1846 and turned the project over to Capt. James McKay in 1847. According to the county, McKay completed a two-story house measuring 20 feet by 45 feet at a cost of $1,358, and the commissioners later paid him an extra $10 for additional work. The marker inscription dates the courthouses built on the square to 1848 and 1855; in those years the Tampa courthouse served a county that still included land now in Pinellas, Polk, Manatee and other counties, according to the county's anniversary history.

The fourth courthouse on the square was built to be noticed. The county describes a red brick courthouse with a silver dome that occupied one square block in downtown Tampa, and its anniversary history places it at the intersection of Madison and Franklin streets. The designer was J.A. Wood, who also designed Henry Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, the building that now houses part of the University of Tampa.

The family resemblance was intentional. A circa 1930 photograph in the USF Libraries Florida Photograph Collection catalogs the building as the fourth Hillsborough County Courthouse, constructed in 1891 and 1892, and notes that John A. Wood included some of the Moorish style used on the Tampa Bay Hotel across the Hillsborough River. The library's description of the image lists a large, ornate building with a prominent dome and arched windows, and files it under Moorish revival architecture. Hillsborough County dates the building to 1892, while the 1972 marker gives 1891, the year construction began.

The courthouse has outlived its own demolition in one place. Hillsborough County notes that the distinctive building is preserved in the County seal, so the silver dome that once rose over Franklin Street in Tampa survives as an emblem of Hillsborough County government.

The sources differ by a year. Hillsborough County says the Wood courthouse was torn down in 1953, while the Tampa Historical Society marker says it was demolished in 1952. USF Libraries ties the demolition to a new building, stating that the domed building was demolished when the current Hillsborough County Courthouse was built four blocks to the east, and the county dates that next courthouse to 1952.

That 1952 building did not disappear when the courts outgrew it. Hillsborough County reports that it is still used as an administrative building for the court system. The old square took a different path; photographs attached to the HMdb marker record show Tampa Police Headquarters built on the former Courthouse Square, with the 1972 marker standing near the corner of East Madison and North Franklin streets. The record credits the marker to the Tampa Historical Society in cooperation with Marine Bank and Trust Co., and its text names J.A. Wood as the architect of H.B. Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, tying the vanished courthouse to the hotel that Hillsborough County describes as a landmark still standing across the Hillsborough River from downtown Tampa.

A separate open space carries the courthouse name today. Joe Chillura Courthouse Square is a county-owned public space close to the Hillsborough County downtown facilities on Kennedy Boulevard, open daily from sunrise to sunset. County rules for the square, set under Ordinance No. 08-17, bar amplified sound, unauthorized vendors and skateboarding, and the county does not accept reservations for it.

The current main courthouse honors a Tampa judge. Hillsborough County's Faces Behind the Places series identifies George E. Edgecomb (1942 to 1976) as the first African-American county court judge in Hillsborough County. Raised in public housing in Tampa, he was student body president at Middleton High School and at Clark College, earned a law degree at Howard University, and was serving as the county's first African-American prosecutor when Gov. Reubin Askew named him to the bench in 1973. A biography in the Morison Buck collection at USF calls him the first Black judge for Hillsborough County.

The building itself is large. The county reports that the Edgecomb Courthouse cost $42.9 million, covers 332,000 square feet and was dedicated in January 2004 as the main building of Florida's 13th Judicial Circuit. It stands at Twiggs Street, which the county's history places at the corner of Pierce Street and Twiggs Street, and it is the first building in downtown Tampa named for an African-American. A bronze bust of Edgecomb stands in the lobby, and the statue Veritas et Justitia stands outside the front doors.

County government has its own downtown home nearby. Hillsborough County says the County Center administration building opened in 1994 and was renamed the Frederick B. Karl County Center in 2000 for the county administrator who was instrumental in buying it.