Buildings, Supreme Court

Buildings, Supreme Court Until October 1935, when the Supreme Court moved into its own building, it had always shared space with other governing institutions. The Court held its first session in February 1790, on the second floor of the Royal Exchange Building in New York City. The lower house of the state legislature used the large vaulted room for its meetings during the morning hours, while the Court sat in the afternoon. With no cases on the docket in the February and August terms, the Court met only a few days to handle routine administrative matters, including the admission of attorneys to its bar. Judicial concentration was not encouraged by the presence of a nearby market, although the city attempted to decrease the noise of passing wagons by blocking off the immediate area of the Exchange (see figure 1).

In December 1790 Philadelphia became the new seat of government, pursuant to an act of Congress. The Court found temporary quarters in the State House, occupying a room on the first floor that had long been used by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. As a courtroom, this handsome Georgian chamber left little to be desired, except for winter stoves, which the legislature refused to provide. With no cases yet to be heard, the Court completed its February term in only two days. It reconvened in October 1791 in a more permanent location, the newly constructed city hall.

Located on the east side of the State House Square, Philadelphia's city hall housed local courts and municipal offices, while offering limited accommodations to the federal judiciary. For the next nine years the Court shared a comfortable room on the first floor with the Mayor's Court. In case of a schedule conflict, which occurred in 1796, the justices had to vacate the room and move upstairs to the chambers of the Common Council. Congress and the president, in contrast, occupied buildings designated for their exclusive use.

As the construction of a permanent national capital on the banks of the Potomac got underway, the judicial branch aroused little public interest. Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original plan for the city of Washington had reserved a site for the Court midway between the Capitol and the White House, but no construction had begun when the government moved from Philadelphia in 1800. Congress finally permitted the Court to use a committee room on the first floor of the Capitol, only one wing of which had yet been completed.

In this small, unfinished chamber, described by architect Benjamin Latrobe as “meanly furnished, very inconvenient,” the Court met from 1801 until 1808. During that time it occasionally shared space with the district and circuit courts of the District of Columbia and endured distracting noise from the crowds milling around in the corridor outside. In 1808 the Capitol underwent major repair and remodeling, as the floor of the Senate chamber was raised one story above its original level. To escape the resulting din, the Court moved to another room, which normally housed the Library of Congress; in 1809 it sat for a time in a nearby tavern.

When the justices reconvened for the February 1810 term, they occupied a new chamber that had been specially designed for their use by Latrobe. Located directly beneath the Senate chamber in what was now the basement of the Capitol, this semicircular courtroom boasted a handsome vaulted ceiling that supported the floor above (see figure 2). The Court had little time to enjoy its new surroundings, however, thanks to the War of 1812. British troops invaded Washington and burned the Capitol in the summer of 1814, forcing the Court to seek alternative accommodations once again.

For two years the justices met in a rented house on Capitol Hill, before returning to a dingy, makeshift chamber in the still unrestored Capitol. Finally, in 1819, they were able to reoccupy their courtroom, where they remained for the next forty years. The room had some attractive features: The justices sat behind individual mahogany desks on a slightly raised platform; below them was a railed enclosure for the bar, from which several steps ascended to an encircling visitors' gallery. But the courtroom was also small, damp, and poorly lighted, and the justices had to share it, as before, with some lower federal courts.

In the late 1850s two new wings were added to the Capitol to accommodate an overgrown House and Senate. The Court then moved upstairs to the old Senate chamber, while its basement courtroom became a law library. The change of quarters in 1860 gave the Court some needed space and a more impressive forum for its deliberations. Contemporary visitors praised the beauty of the renovated chamber, with its soft brown carpet, its row of green marble columns behind the justices, and its benches fitted with red velvet cushions for spectators (see figure 3). Across the corridor, in rooms formerly used by the Senate, was the judicial robing room and offices for the Court's clerks, marshal, and reporter. In 1866 Congress further provided a comfortable conference room for the justices on the ground floor, near the library.

Despite these improvements, serious problems remained. The justices had to parade across an often crowded public corridor to enter and leave the courtroom; the offices of the Court's employees were small and crowded, and no chambers were available for the justices themselves; and there was a critical lack of space for the expansion of the Court's library and the preservation of its increasing records. In light of these unpromising conditions, Chief Justice William Howard Taft began vigorous lobbying efforts in 1925 to secure for the Court a separate building under its exclusive control.

Congress responded favorably to Taft's initiatives and approved the site he recommended: a plot on East Capitol Street adjoining the Library of Congress and facing the Capitol grounds. As chairman of the building commission, Taft further supervised the architectural design of the structure by Cass Gilbert. When completed in 1935, the Supreme Court Building—a grandiose temple of white marble, with a central portico and matching wings—effectively symbolized the power and independence of the judicial branch. (For illustrations, see Architecture of the Supreme Court Building.)

There the Court has remained ever since, except for a period in October 2001, when the discovery of anthrax spores in the mailroom forced the evacuation of the building. The incident, which followed the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., a month earlier, disrupted the Court's schedule for a time, with the justices moving their sessions to the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse a short distance away.

See also Chambers; Paintings in the Supreme Court Building; Sculpture in the Supreme Court Building.

Bibliography

Catherine Hetos Skefos , The Supreme Court Gets a Home, Supreme Court Historical Society Yearbook (1976), pp. 25–36.
Charles Warren , The Supreme Court in United States History, 2 vols. (1922).

Maxwell Bloomfield