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.
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