So far, we've covered the history of The News-Press and the formation of Lee County in this space. This week, the storied history of the Lee County Courthouse, courtesy of excerpts from an article by Cynthia A. Williams in the November 2015 The News-Press celebrating the 100-year anniversary:

In 1915, the citizens of Fort Myers must have taken a large measure of pride in the modernization of Fort Myers with the completion, in that year alone, of McGregor Boulevard and the stately Lee County Courthouse.

But beneath the veneer of modernization and civic pride smoldered old animosities.

Lee County was created by act of the state legislature in 1887. Early in 1888, a general election gave the county seat to Fort Myers. And that's when the trouble began.

Exhilarated by visions of a glorious future for Fort Myers and Lee County, the new county commissioners -- in particular, William (Bill) H. Towles -- immediately began working up support for construction of a very grand, three-story, concrete courthouse. Only the permanency of concrete would do justice, so to speak, to the seat of a county that covered very nearly the whole of Southwest Florida.

Bonds were issued to pay for the project, but no one bought them, and five years later, the county commissioners miserably contracted with the lowest bidder for a regular old two-story, frame courthouse.

But Towles was a bulldog. If he once got his teeth into something he wanted, you couldn't shake him loose from it. Bill wanted a monumental stone courthouse. It was, therefore, a pretty safe bet that we were going to have one. He waited 20 years. And then in 1914, as chairman of the board of county commissioners, Towles brought up again the little matter of a concrete courthouse. The Board readily assented to his proposal. An architect was hired and a $74,900 construction contract awarded.

Ah, but wait. Harvie Heitman objected. Naturally. He would. The animosity between Towles and Heitman, arising ostensibly from their allegiance to rival banking businesses in town. Click on the link on this page to read about their historic fights.

By December of 1915, there it stood in all its neoclassical splendor of solid brick and granite, porticoed with towering Doric columns and opening to a sweeping lobby of marble and carved wood, of wide hallways gleaming with geometric tiles.

It was simply astonishing.

Over the next 69 years, the physical and legal infrastructure to support Lee County's phenomenal growth flowed from this majestic courthouse as from the arteries of a great, beating heart.