The building was designed by local noted architect L. Phillips Clarke formerly of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and later West Palm Beach by the 1920s, with a prominent active firm / partnership of Harvey and Clarke which designed the landmark structure plus numerous other buildings in the South Florida region over several decades.

It was constructed by Chalker & Lund of poured concrete walls with terrazzo floors in the Art Deco style of architecture popular in that era for the Federal Government's new agency and New Deal program to combat the mass unemployment and bad economic conditions of the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s.

Because of this, both the National Register and the Cultural Center have retained the two-word spelling of "Court House" even though the one-word version is the current preferred one.

Seventeen years later in 1954, the growing county bought a building to the west that had been used as an automobile sales dealership by Web Ordway Ford and later as an A & P (Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company) grocery food store and converted it into a needed courthouse annex.

At the same time, the county extended the original 1908 courthouse and the 1937 addition west to abut the annex and joined their hallways.