After a contentious political battle in the 1860s, the Wood County seat of government was moved from Perrysburg to Bowling Green, where the city's first courthouse was built in 1868 on E. Court St. That building was demolished in 1893, and a new courthouse was erected on the same site for about $275,000. Designed by Yost and Packard of Columbus, Ohio, in a Romanesque style reminiscent of Medieval Europe, the sandstone, granite, and marble building stands on solid rock and features an exterior carved mural, a 185-foot clock tower with a large bell, falcons, and a clock said in 1897 to have the second largest clockface in the United States. Inside are two large murals, created about 1896 by Isaac Moore Taylor, a city council member who became Bowling Green's mayor in 1910, showing the former oil wells of the Village of Portage and nearby Fort Meigs. Notable events there included President William Howard Taft's 1912 rally and President Ronald Reagan's 1988 speech promoting George H. W. Bush's candidacy. The Wood County Jail behind the courthouse was completed in 1902, vacated in 1990 after the Wood County Justice Center was built on Bowling Green's eastern edge, and later served as the Wood County Records Center and Law Library. The courthouse was placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and the old county jail received the same designation in 1974.