This Mediterranean Revival style building housed Palm Beach Junior College, Florida’s first public community college, when it was established here in 1933. The college outgrew these facilities after the Second World War and moved in 1948 to Morrison Field, a U.S. Army Air Base renovated to accommodate the influx of students in peace time, then relocated in 1955 to its present site in Lake Worth. Among the civic leaders who promoted the concept of the junior college were Palm Beach County Superintendent of Schools Joseph A. Youngblood and Palm Beach High School Principal Howell L. Watkins. The college served as a model for the statewide system of junior colleges. Three students were in the first graduating class of 1936, and in 1936 John I. Leonard became the first president of Palm Beach Junior College. Designed by noted West Palm Beach architect William Manley King in the Mediterranean Revival style popular in Florida in the 1920s, the building complemented the adjacent Palm Beach High School campus and was occupied in 1927. As architect for the Palm Beach County Board of Public Instruction, King designed numerous school buildings throughout Palm Beach County, as well as hotels in West Palm Beach, the National Guard Armory, the Hibiscus Garden Apartments, and the seal for the City of West Palm Beach. In June 1991 the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in November 1991 it was returned to Palm Beach Community College, whose foundation undertook its restoration for the continuing education of citizens in the community.