History of Judiciary Square

Judiciary Square lies adjacent to the monumental core of Washington, D.C. Its buildings, streets, structures, and objects reflect the 210-year history of the Federal City. Located north of Pennsylvania Avenue, the street planned by city designer Pierre Charles L'Enfant to be the most important in the new nation's capital, and between the Capitol and the White House, the two most significant buildings in the city, Judiciary Square and its neighboring blocks have responded to governmental influences throughout their history. And yet, because it became the municipal center of the city early in its history as a result of the construction of the city hall there, the Judiciary Square area retained a residential and commercial character through the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century.

The most significant building erected early in the study area's history was the Old D.C. Courthouse (Old City Hall). Designed as the city hall by architect George Hadfield, the Old Courthouse was completed in three stages between 1820 and 1849. His design for the city hall, influenced by the European Neoclassicism he had studied in Italy and England, won a competition in 1820. From the beginning, the building was intended to house both administrative offices and courts.

The Judiciary Square area was home to a variety of residential building types throughout the nineteenth century. Its location halfway between the Capitol and the White House was convenient for politicians since it allowed easy access to both buildings, and the courthouse drew lawyers and judges to the neighborhood. Residents of the area included Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, and Vice President John C. Calhoun. Only a few rowhouses from the nineteenth century remain; those at 501 D Street and 406 5th Street were most likely constructed prior to the Civil War. A row house at 503 D Street, constructed prior to 1902, sits on the site of statesman Daniel Webster's house.

Today, the Judiciary Square area is graced with numerous memorial sculptures. That aspect of the area's character began to be formed at the end of the Civil War. Within days of Lincoln's assassination on April 15,1865, Washington residents began a subscription to raise money for a memorial to the president. Sculpted by Lott Flannery, the Abraham Lincoln Statue was erected on a 35-foot-high column in the center of what was then D Street in front of the Old D.C. Courthouse. The statue, the first public monument to Lincoln, was dedicated on the third anniversary of his assassination.

Congress reorganized Washington's court system in 1863, and the former City Hall became the home of the newly formed Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Ten years later, the federal government purchased the city's interest in the building, and the Architect of the Capitol became responsible for its maintenance. In 1881, Architect of the Capitol Edward Clark designed an extension of the building on its north side, which was completed in 1883. Clark's extension imitated the forms and materials of Hadfield's original building, even including an Ionic portico facing Judiciary Square.

During renovation, the 1868 statue of Abraham Lincoln was removed from the center of what was then called D Street, but it was returned to a paved plaza in front of the old Courthouse in 1923.
The Old D.C. Courthouse was renovated in 1916. The renovation essentially rebuilt the original stuccoed brick courthouse of brick, reinforced concrete, and steel, and faced the structure with limestone. The reconstruction retained Hadfield's elevations, but altered the north facade, removing Edward Clark's Ionic portico. The interior was entirely redesigned by Woods to accommodate contemporary judicial practice.

Also in 1923, the Joseph J. Darlington Fountain, dedicated to the memory of a leader of the Washington Bar Association, was placed in the southwest corner of Judiciary Square, and winding walks were laid out around it. Sculptor Carl Paul Jennewein designed the fountain's sculptural group. Incorporated into the landscaping plan of this corner of the square was a 15-foot-high, brick ventilating shaft constructed for the Old Courthouse in 1892. The statue of South American liberator Jose de San Martin, a copy of the original in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was erected in the center of the square in 1925.

Construction of a complex of public buildings also altered the character of Judiciary Square itself in the 1930s, but in this case the public buildings were courthouses and they reorganized space that had been a park since the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The scale and forms for the courthouses built on Judiciary Square north of the Old Courthouse in the 1930s remained faithful to the standards of their nineteenth-century predecessor. Elliott Woods set the parameters for the rest of the complex with the neoclassical forms and limestone surfaces of the Court of Appeals (currently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces) was built at and the construction of the Old Courthouse. Plans of Judiciary Square from 1922 show that Woods foresaw a building to match the Court of Appeals on the opposite side of the square. This building was constructed as the Juvenile Court (Court Building C) in 1938.

The architect for the Juvenile Court and the other two court buildings in the square - the Police Court (Court Building A) and the Municipal Court (Court Building B) - was Nathan C. Wyeth, Washington's municipal architect from 1934 to 1946. The first to be constructed was the Police Court, which was approved by Congress on May 6, 1935. Construction began in the fall of 1936 after the transfer from the federal government to the District of a 66-foot-wide strip of land along F Street (which included the roadway as well as the walks on either side). The land was needed to provide space for Wyeth's design, placed north of the Court of Appeals. Construction of the Juvenile and Municipal court buildings on the east side of Judiciary Square to mirror the Court of Appeals and the Police Court began in the fall of 1938.

The forms, materials, and scale of these courthouses matched the buildings across the square. The five court buildings and Pension Building (currently the National Building Museum) formed a campus-like quadrangle around the walks, trees, and flowers of the square and the San Martin statue at its center.

Wyeth showed his ability to design in contemporary forms when a delayed plan to create a Municipal Center for the District of Columbia south of the Old Courthouse began to take shape in the late 1930s. Drawings of a 1929 plan for the center show a monumental Beaux Arts group of buildings similar to those of the Federal Triangle. A reduced plan was approved in 1934, but construction on a single building, called the Municipal Center, did not begin until 1939.

In 1975-76, the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse was constructed at the intersection of Indiana Avenue and 6th Street. The courthouse references in concrete the columnar forms of the Old D.C. Courthouse and the Municipal Center. Once this area had been mostly filled in, further expansion was accommodated in nearby blocks.

This history of Judiciary Square was extracted from the Judiciary Square Master Plan, and was prepared for The District of Columbia Courts, The United States General Services Administration and The National Capital Planning Commission, June 6, 2003, by Metropolitan Architects & Planners, Inc., Gruzen Samton, LLP, Karn Charuhas Chapman Twohey, Inc., Associated Architects Edaw, Inc., O.R. George & Associates, Robinson & Associates.

^ back to top