The Old Indian River County Courthouse in Vero Beach, Florida

The Old Indian River County Courthouse is a two-story Art Moderne building at 2145 14th Avenue, completed in 1937 as the first permanent home of Indian River County government in Vero Beach.

The 1999 National Register nomination describes the original building as rising two stories, with an H-pattern ground plan, a flat roof with parapet and a buff brick finish, and a design showing the restrained influence of the Art Moderne style with brick and cast stone detailing. The interior originally held administrative offices on the first floor and offices and an expansive courtroom on the second floor. The building stands across 14th Avenue from Pocahontas Park, on the principal historic commercial street in Vero Beach.

By the time of the nomination the Vero Beach building had been adapted as a privately owned office building and largely restored to its original appearance. The National Park Service NPGallery record, reference 99000768, lists Moderne as the style, names politics and government, architecture and social history as areas of significance, and gives 1937 as the significant year and 7/19/1999 as the date published.

Before 1937 Indian River County offices used rented space in Vero Beach, first in the Seminole Building and then, during the 1930s, in the Palmetto Hotel.

The City of Vero Beach history page records that in 1925 a number of prominent citizens of Vero lobbied in Tallahassee for a new county they named Indian River, and that Vero was designated the county seat and renamed Vero Beach. The nomination adds the trigger: when the Vero Theatre was completed in 1924, its owners proposed to open on Sundays against St. Lucie County blue laws, and officials in Fort Pierce sent the sheriff to enforce Sunday closing. Senator A.W. Young introduced the bill, and on June 29, 1925 the governor signed the act creating Indian River County from the northern part of St. Lucie County.

County offices were first housed on the second floor of the Seminole Building, a two-story commercial block at 21st Street and Seminole Avenue. During the 1930s they moved to the Palmetto Hotel, later called the Charlton Apartments, at Old Dixie Highway and 19th Street. The nomination notes that neither building was designed for government work, and the end of the land boom and the economic slump that began in 1929 left the county without the tax revenue to build its own.

The Vero Beach courthouse was financed through a $75,000 loan from the Public Works Administration, approved in February 1935 after an application filed in August 1933.

The nomination says the original terms required only 70 percent of the amount borrowed to be paid back, and that the commissioners counted the jobs the project would create among its justifications. The loan followed intense lobbying by the Vero Beach Chamber of Commerce and its president, local attorney James T. Vocelle, and Congressman J. Mark Wilson intervened with PWA officials. In July 1935 the City of Vero Beach donated the land opposite Pocahontas Park, and in December 1935 county voters passed a bond issue to serve as collateral.

Construction began in April 1936 and was completed in March 1937. The architect was W.H. Garns and Son of Vero Beach and Indianapolis, the contractor was William Hensick and Son, and J.H. Addison of the federal Public Works Administration served as resident engineer inspector. The nomination calls the courthouse one of the major federal projects built in Florida during the 1930s, and reports that it was the only local government building in Florida pictured in the 1939 PWA book Public Buildings.

The Vero Beach courthouse has a symmetrical H-shaped plan, with a five-bay main block facing east toward 14th Avenue and three-bay wings to either side.

According to the nomination, the east elevation of the Vero Beach courthouse has cast stone coping, sills, lintels, a belt course, door surrounds and an entablature, set against buff brick veneer. Wings of compatible design were added to the south end in 1957 and the north end in 1961, with lighter buff brick and simpler spandrels, and a 1973 elevator tower obscures the center of the west elevation. Inside, the plan is organized around two corridors, with the tax assessor and the clerk of the circuit court on the first floor and the courtroom, judge's chambers and jury rooms on the second.

The courtroom was the most significant space in the Vero Beach building, with heart pine floors and oak wainscoting. During the renovations described in the nomination, those features were replicated, non-historic partitions were removed and the original layout of the courtroom was restored. Windows that had been enclosed were restored to their original design from historic photographs and drawings.

Garns was an Indianapolis architect who kept offices in both Indianapolis and Vero Beach and designed the courthouse and other Vero Beach buildings.

The nomination says Garns first came to Vero Beach from Indianapolis in 1925, at the height of the Florida land boom, returned to Indianapolis after two years, and went back to Vero about 1933 when planning for the courthouse began. Besides the courthouse he designed the Vero Beach Physical Arts building, listed in 1992 and known today as the Vero Heritage Center, and other buildings in Vero Beach, West Palm Beach and Indianapolis.

The courthouse housed much of Indian River County government when it opened. Offices in the new building included the clerk of the circuit court, tax assessor, property appraiser, county commissioners, county and circuit judges and the school board, the nomination states.

The courts now sit in the Indian River County Courthouse at 2000 16th Avenue in Vero Beach, and the 1937 building became a privately owned office building.

The Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller lists the current Indian River County Courthouse at 2000 16th Avenue, Vero Beach, phone (772) 226-3100. The older building on 14th Avenue carried the name Court House Executive Center by the 2000s: the state's Great Floridians 2000 program placed its plaque for Sherman N. Smith Jr., elected Prosecuting Attorney of Indian River County in 1940 and later chief judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Vero Beach, at the Court House Executive Center, 2145 14th Avenue.

The City of Vero Beach National Register page lists the Indian River County Courthouse among the National Register properties in the city, alongside the Vero Theatre and the Pueblo Arcade, and assigns review of such nominations to the Historic Preservation Commission. Last verified: October 15, 2026, after re-reading the 1999 National Register nomination and NPGallery record, the City of Vero Beach history and National Register pages, the Clerk of the Circuit Court home page and the archived Great Floridians 2000 list.