The delicate Beaux Arts styling of the building can be attributed to the skilled team of architects involved in its construction.  The lead designers were the noted firm of Eckle and Aldrich, of St. Joseph, who worked with local architect Harry Satterlee Bill on the project.  The refined use of the Beaux Arts style can be attributed to the involvement of Edmund Eckle, who trained at the famed Ecole des Beaux Arts in the 1860s, and later settled in St. Joseph, Missouri.  The project was done near the end of Edmund Eckle’s long distinguished career; he was 87 when the building was finished and died two years later.

Harry S. Bill, an architect who was active in Columbia in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, has been associated with a number of other Columbia projects, including work on the Central Diary Building located on the opposite end of the district, at 1104-06 East Broadway, as well as several houses in the Grasslands neighborhood west of Downtown.

The City of Columbia completed a sensitive historic rehabilitation of the building in 2006, and it continues to house city offices.  That project included restoration of a set of murals that were added to the second floor courtroom from 1933-1938.  The murals are the work of Regionalist artist Ken Hudson, who was chairman of the Art Department at MU during that time, and later taught at Washington University.  They trace the development of Columbia from its founding to the 1930s.