This downtown Springfield site near the courthouse was highly sought after when building lots were first surveyed. William Pile had a storehouse here in 1797, and John Lancaster owned the lot in 1813. Before 1876, local entrepreneurs and lifelong business partners Hugh and Anthony McElroy bought the lot and built a frame building on Lot #2 called Temperance Hall. After a state law passed in 1877 requiring all counties to provide fire proof vaults for vital records storage, Temperance Hall was razed and the present brick building was erected. On March 12, 1879, Anthony McElroy deeded the lot and new building to the Washington County Fiscal Court for use as the County Clerk and Circuit Clerk offices, a role it served until the Courthouse Annex was built in 1939. The building's two-foot-thick vault walls are still visible inside. On May 24, 1940, the building was sold at public outcry to Katherine Spalding on behalf of her brothers, dentists Dr. Joseph Lea Spalding and Dr. Leonard Marion Spalding, who operated a dental practice on the second floor for many years, while Farm Bureau, Federal Land Bank, Washington County Cooperative, and Modern Beauty Shop occupied the first floor during the 1940s through 1980. In 1981, attorney John W. Kelly and his wife, Tillie Kelly, bought the building, and John's nephew Dan Kelly later joined him in practicing law there until John Kelly's death in 2000. State Senator Dan Kelly and his wife, Darlene, purchased the property in 2001, and he continued to practice law there until becoming Circuit Judge in November 2009. The Kellys sold the building in December 2009 to L. Gregory and Margaret McElroy Goatley, and it continues to serve as a law office.