Brevard County government at Viera, and why the seat is still Titusville

Brevard County’s seat is Titusville, and it has been since county voters chose it in 1879. Its working government is somewhere else. The Board of County Commissioners meets in the Commission Chambers at the Brevard County Government Center in Viera, the planned community in central Brevard, and the county’s main courthouse, the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Justice Center, is a short walk away. Both stand on land The Viera Company gave the county.

The seat

Titusville won the seat in 1879, the year Brevard annexed the southern part of Volusia County, Titusville included. According to the National Park Service’s history of the town, county voters chose it “overwhelmingly” over Eau Gallie and Rockledge, and Col. Henry Titus donated land for county buildings on condition that it be used for nothing else. The county’s first courthouse went up on that land in 1882; its replacement, ordered in 1912, opened in March 1913. The full story is on our sister site’s county seat page.

The Eighteenth Judicial Circuit still lists the Titusville historic courthouse among Brevard’s court locations, along with a courthouse in Melbourne and the Moore Justice Center in Viera.

The Viera campus

The Viera Company, the developer of Viera and a part of A. Duda & Sons, lists three government parcels it donated in the middle of the county:

• The Government Center, the county’s administration complex, on 53 acres. The developer lists the County Manager, the Board of County Commissioners, Planning and Development, Public Works, Public Safety, Natural Resources Management and the Clerk of Court among the offices there.
• The Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Justice Center, within walking distance, which the company’s timeline says opened in 1996. (Its pages give the parcel as both 23 and 32 acres.)
• The Brevard County School Board, across the street, on 30 acres.

For anyone looking for county government, that’s the practical answer: the commission chambers are in Viera, and so are most county offices and the main court building.

The distinction that confuses people is simple once it’s laid out. The seat never moved. Titusville is the county seat; Viera is where the county does most of its business.

Further Reading

• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon