Completed in 1918 by city leaders of Clearwater who feared that they would lose the county seat to St. Petersburg unless they built a modern courthouse to replace the rather hastily-completed structure they built when they were first awarded the county seat in 1911 when Pinellas County became a separate entity from Hillsborough County. A state law at the time aimed at promoting efficiency in government prohibited a county seat from moving to a new city within twenty years of the completion of a courthouse.
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