John Rochester Thomas created the original plans while Arthur J. Horgan and Vincent J. Slattery oversaw the building's completion.

The exterior is decorated with 54 sculptures by Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, as well as three-story colonnades with Corinthian columns along Chambers and Reade Streets.

Construction took place between 1899 and 1907, having been subject to several delays because of controversies over funding, sculptures, and Horgan and Slattery's involvement after Thomas's death in 1901.

[8] The surrounding area contains evidence of the interments of individuals, mostly of African descent, but the foundations of the Surrogate's Courthouse may have destroyed any remnants of corpses on the site.

[11][12] The site also included a water reservoir built of stone and maintained by the Manhattan Company from 1799 until 1842, when the Croton Aqueduct opened.

[14] Fay Kellogg, who designed the prominent double staircase in the building's lobby, helped prepare plans for the Hall of Records.

[16] The Surrogate's Courthouse's seven-story granite facade wraps around the building's structural frame, while the interiors are elaborately designed in marble.

[17][21] The seventh story contains dormer windows with carved hoods, projecting from the mansard roof in all except the end bays.

Above the central Chambers Street dormer is a clock with a dial measuring 4 feet (1.2 m) across, flanked by figures of Poetry and Philosophy and topped by four cherubs and two caryatids.

[24] The German sculptor Albert Weinert created two marble sculptural groups, one above each set of doorways; these depict the 1624 purchase of Manhattan Island and the 1898 creation of the City of Greater New York.

[24][31][41] The vestibule's elliptical ceiling contains mosaic murals and panels created by William de Leftwich Dodge.

[25][37][47] The north courtroom is finished in Santo Domingo mahogany and has four carved panels signifying wisdom, truth, civilization and degradation, as well as six repeating motifs and several portraits of surrogates.

There are also ornately carved fireplaces, which contain marble mantelpieces lined with bronze surrounds made by Tiffany & Co.[25][47] The seventh floor and the attic housed the city's records on steel shelves until 2017.

[19][54] The basement also included more than 720,000 photographs on rolls of nitrate film, which were stored in freezers,[55] in addition to some New York Supreme Court records.

[59][60] The New-York Mirror described the original building as a Grecian-style structure with marble-columned porticoes on each side, as well as stucco walls, a copper roof, and masonry floors.

[74] Instead, they suggested that the city hire John R. Thomas,[74] who had won the second of four architectural design competitions for the Manhattan Municipal Building (held between 1892 and 1894).

[82][83][84] Strong, who had been elected on a platform of political reform in 1895, said the city government could save money by adopting Thomas's existing plans.

[81] According to architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler, Strong had reminded the Board of Estimate that Thomas "deserved some consolation for a failure that had occurred by no fault of his own".

[119] The board rejected all the bids, saying the comptroller's office had received anonymous complaints that Thomas had shown favoritism to certain contractors.

[123] Under pressure from Van Wyck, the Board of Estimate appointed Horgan and Slattery as the new architects two weeks later,[124][125] prompting the Thomas estate to sue for damages.

[140][141] Low upheld Martiny's and Bush-Brown's contracts in June, which The New York Times estimated to be worth $75,000,[29][b] but deferred the completion of the interior murals.

[154][155] A New-York Tribune report that November claimed that, had the building been erected by private interests, it would have opened in 1903 and cost $2 million less.

[187] Another modification was made to the eastern facade in 1959, when the statues flanking the Centre Street entrance were removed because of street-widening work and the expansion of the underlying subway station.

The New York City Council adopted a resolution to rename the structure that October because most of the building's space was used by the court and related offices.

[191] Land acquisition began in late 1964,[192] but the redevelopment plans were ultimately scrapped during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis.

[203] New York Times reporter David W. Dunlap wrote in 2006 that, although the general public could not enter the building unless they had business there, DCAS had advised its guards to allow visitors to see the lobby.

[56] The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs moved into a 13,000-square-foot (1,200 m2) space on the second floor in 2006, following a $4.1 million renovation designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects.

[18] Upon the Hall of Records' completion, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said: "The exterior of the big granite pile on Chambers and Centre streets may appeal to the artistic eye, but the interior is a positive revelation, and there is probably nothing like it in any city of the Union.

"[25] Montgomery Schuyler, who had been on the committee that approved Thomas's plans, wrote in 1905 that "the Hall of Records comes nearer than any other public building in New York to recalling" what he described as a "Parisian" quality.

[209] The Detroit Free Press praised the Hall of Records as "one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture in the country",[26] and The Christian Science Monitor similarly described the structure as one of the city's prettiest buildings.