Hillsborough County Courthouses in Tampa

Six buildings have housed the county's courts in downtown Tampa since Hillsborough County was organized in 1834.

Hillsborough County records that the U.S. Legislative Council for the Territory of Florida approved the act organizing Hillsborough as Florida's 19th county on Jan. 25, 1834. The county's own history then lists a small log cabin courthouse burned during the Second Seminole War, a two-story replacement completed by Capt. James McKay in 1847, the red brick courthouse with a silver dome built in 1892, a courthouse built in 1952, and the George E. Edgecomb Courthouse, which opened in 2004. A photograph record at USF Libraries fills the gap in that list with a third courthouse built in 1855 and used until 1891.

For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries the courts stood on one downtown block. USF Libraries catalogs both the third and the fourth courthouses at Courthouse Square, an area bounded by Madison Street, Franklin Street, Lafayette Street (now Kennedy Boulevard) and Florida Avenue, and titles both photographs with the address 411 Franklin St.

The first Hillsborough County courthouses in Tampa were small buildings serving a county of only 836 counted residents.

Hillsborough County's history says the original courthouse was a small log cabin that burned during the Second Seminole War, and that when the first county commissioners met in 1846, a new courthouse and jail were on their agenda alongside taxes, transportation and downtown development. That year the county tax raised $148.69, and commissioners were paid $2 per day while in session.

The courthouse served very few people at first. The county's anniversary history counts a population of just 836 when the county was established in 1834, not including soldiers and Native Americans, and says most residents lived in the village of Tampa while the rest of the county was sparsely populated. Florida was still a territory and would not become a state for another 11 years, so the first Tampa courthouse was a territorial institution. At statehood in 1845, according to the county, Hillsborough still covered what is now Pinellas, Polk, Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, DeSoto, Hardee and Highlands counties, most of Glades County and part of Lee County.

The Hillsborough County commissioners approved plans for a new courthouse 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 next building lasted far longer. The USF Libraries record for an 1877 photograph by James C. Field says the third version of the courthouse was built in 1855 and used until 1891. Its first floor held City Hall, the Judges of Probate, the County Clerk, the Sheriff's offices and the grand jurors' room, and the courtroom filled the second floor, so for more than three decades city and county government shared a single building on the Tampa square.

The fourth courthouse was a red brick building with a silver dome that filled one block of downtown Tampa.

Hillsborough County describes a red brick courthouse with a silver dome occupying one square block in downtown Tampa, and its anniversary history places it at the intersection of Madison and Franklin streets. The county names J.A. Wood as the designer and notes that he also designed the Tampa Bay Hotel, which Henry Plant opened in 1891 on the west bank of the Hillsborough River and which is now part of the University of Tampa.

The resemblance between the two buildings was deliberate. 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 architecture style that the Tampa Bay Hotel had across the Hillsborough River. The library files the image under Moorish revival architecture.

The two official records date the building slightly differently. Hillsborough County gives 1892, the year the courthouse was built, while USF Libraries gives construction as 1891 and 1892 and says the 1855 courthouse was used until 1891, when the fourth version was built.

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 survives as an emblem of Hillsborough County government.

The domed Tampa courthouse was torn down in 1953, after a new courthouse was built in 1952 four blocks to the east.

Hillsborough County says the Wood courthouse was torn down in 1953 and that the next courthouse was built in 1952. USF Libraries agrees on the year, stating that the domed building was demolished in 1953 when the then new Hillsborough County Courthouse was built four blocks to the east.

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, so two generations of courthouse remain in county use downtown.

A separate open space carries the courthouse name today. Joe Chillura Courthouse Square, at 600 E. Kennedy Blvd., is a county-owned open space close to the Hillsborough County downtown facilities. It is free and open to the public daily from sunrise to sunset, and the county does not accept reservations for special use or events there. The posted rules bar unauthorized vendors, amplified sound, generators, structures, skating, skateboarding, scooters and biking, and point to Ordinance No. 08-17 for other rules. Questions go to the county's Facilities Management and Real Estate Services at (813) 272-5810.

The current main courthouse honors the first African-American county court judge in Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough County's Faces Behind the Places series identifies George E. Edgecomb (1942 to 1976) as that judge. Raised by a single mother 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 the governor named him to the bench in 1973. A biography in the Morison Buck collection of Hillsborough County judges at USF calls him the first Black judge for Hillsborough County.

The building itself is large. The county reports that the Edgecomb Courthouse, at 800 E. Twiggs St., cost $42.9 million, covers 332,000 square feet and was dedicated in January 2004 as the main building for Florida's 13th Judicial Circuit. The county's history places it at the corner of Pierce Street and Twiggs Street. It is the first building in downtown Tampa named for an African-American, with a bronze bust of Edgecomb in the lobby and a statue, Veritas et Justitia (Lady Justice), 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.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Hillsborough County history, anniversary, Edgecomb namesake and Courthouse Square pages and three USF Libraries catalog records for the third and fourth courthouses and the Edgecomb biography.