"Built on plans drawn by architect and builder John H. Maurice, it was completed in 1863 on a lot that was owned by Tompkins County from 1823 to 1949. Styled after an Italian palazzo, the elegant brick-faced building has distinctive sunburst motifs over the first-floor windows and brick corbels on courses separating the first and second story. Pilasters capped with circular floral motifs frame the second-story windows. A cornice with corbel brackets accents three sides of the building.
The building at
106 N. Tioga Street served as the
Tompkins County Clerk’s Office well into the twentieth century. The office included the County Judge and Surrogate’s Office and Children’s Court. In the 1930s, the Red Cross’s Ithaca Clothing Bureau rented space. An early county economic development group—the Tompkins County Development Association—had their offices in the building for two years in the mid-1930s. During the 1940s, it housed the Club Claret restaurant and nightclub owned by George Atsedes. On its opening night in November 1940, Club Claret patrons dined in the club’s Checkerboard Room and danced in the Claret Room to an orchestra with featured vocalist. Despite Atsedes’ long-term lease and improvements and an addition he made to the building—and a stipulation in an 1823 deed that the property only be used for the
County Clerk’s Office—Tompkins County sold the structure to the Tompkins Trust Company in 1949."