Cuyahoga County was established in 1807—eleven years after “Cleaveland” became a city and four years after Ohio became a state. For the next century, multiple structures provided judicial services for the county. Initially, court was held in various taverns and inns around town. The first actual courthouse was completed in 1813. It contained jail cells, a living room for the sheriff, and a 2nd floor courtroom. Three other facilities—all located on or near Public Square—were built and deployed throughout the 1800s.

The current building on Lakeside Avenue near Cleveland City Hall was completed in 1911 at a cost of more than $4 million. Designed by the architectural firm of Lehman & Schmitt, with Charles Morris (an École des Beaux-Arts alumnus) as chief designer, the building is constructed of Milford pink granite from Massachusetts. It is one of seven buildings composing the Group Plan—a landmark 1903 initiative to redefine downtown Cleveland with open park space and grand, dignified buildings. The Group Plan structures are representative of the Beaux-Arts school, which emphasizes symmetry; arched and pedimented windows and doors; largely flat roofs; and myriad statuary.

The Courthouse is a prominent salute both to the Beaux-Arts tradition and to some of history’s most important figures. Posted at the entrance are bronze statues of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Above the front cornice are representatives of the four kinds of law: Moses (moral law), Byzantine Emperor Justinian (civil law), King Alfred the Great (common law), and Pope Gregory IX (canon law). Various other statuary includes Simon de Montfort (founder of the English House of Commons), English King Edward I (who gave the English people the right to determine taxation), and US Chief Justice John Marshal.

Directly above the front entry doors are three large arched windows between fluted Ionic columns. These south-facing windows allow copious amounts of daylight into the courtroom—a convenience, an aesthetic bonus and even a metaphor. The frieze of the cornice includes the inscription “Cuyahoga County Courthouse.” The rear (northward) elevation facing Lake Erie is composed similarly but with the inscription “Liberty is Obedience to Law.”

The interior, created under the direction of noted Cleveland architect Charles Schweinfurth, features a grand three-story central court with vaulted ceilings, marble Ionic columns, and a balustraded (railing supported by spindles or stair sticks) mezzanine. An elegant curving marble staircase rises past a large stained-glass window representing Law & Justice.

Along with the Mall district, the Cuyahoga County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

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The Group Plan of Public Buildings in 1903 was an ambitious city-planning scheme that—as much as any single initiative—shaped downtown Cleveland. The Plan’s six public buildings are the Federal Building (1910, now the Howard Metzenbaum US Courthouse), the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1911), City Hall (1916), Public Auditorium (1922), the Cleveland Public Library (1926) and the Board of Education Building (1930). A seventh Group Plan structure—the Cuyahoga County Administration Building (1957)—was demolished in 2014 to make way for a Hilton Hotel.

All six structures are loosely clustered around the key Group Plan component, the Mall, a long, three-segment public park northeast of Public Square. The buildings are of uniform height and style, representing the Roman classicism of the Beaux-Arts school of architecture. The strategy was to create an official gateway, an iconic corridor, leading from a new railroad depot on the lakefront to Public Square.

Responding to proposals made by the American Institute of Architects and the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, the City of Cleveland formed the Group Plan Commission in 1902. Three architects—Arnold W. Brunner, John M. Carrére and Daniel Burnham—served on the commission, which presented its recommendations to Mayor Tom L. Johnson in 1903. The resulting Group Plan was heavily influenced by several sources: One was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Another was the Washington, D.C., Mall then under construction. A third was the City Beautiful movement: a response to concerns that the attractiveness and dignity of American cities were being compromised by poverty, over-population and the perceived deleterious effects of immigration. It was believed that “beautification”—personified by ample park space and grand, dignified buildings—would instill civic and moral virtue in city residents and revitalize urban areas that were increasingly perceived by the wealthy as undesirable places to live and work.

The central aim of the Group Plan was to re-center downtown and provide a model that might inspire harmonious architecture guided by principles other than the dominant commercial mode of urban development. However, the rail station idea, which was essential to such a re-centering, was scrapped because the U.S. Railroad Administration worried that local rail traffic would impede cross-country traffic on the "Water Level Route" along the lakefront, a matter of heightened importance during mobilization for World War I. The federal government looked with favor on a southern railroad approach to downtown by local and regional trains. The Van Sweringen plan for the Cleveland Union Terminal, which opened in 1930, meshed with this broader consideration and shifted the city's focus shifted from the Mall back to its traditional center on Public Square.

Despite the Mall's diminished role, it remains nothing less than “beautiful”—a testament to smart planning and placement, and the enduring aesthetic appeal of classical architecture. The Mall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

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