The three-story building was constructed in 1923, as the Astoria Savings Bank, to replace that bank's previous building on the same site, destroyed by fire. The bank went out of business in 1929, as a result of the stock-market crash of that year. Clatsop County acquired the building in 1936, and in 1938 the city of Astoria used a Public Works Administration grant to fund the conversion of the building into a new city hall, to replace the Old Astoria City Hall, built in 1904–05. The city offices, as well as those of the Astoria School District, moved into the new city hall at the end of March 1939. The move put Astoria's city hall in downtown, an improvement in public access over the "isolated" previous location at the edge of downtown.