Thurgood Marshall U. S. Courthouse

 skyscraper, courthouse, Neoclassical (architecture), NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1936_construction, federal government

590-foot, 37-story Neo-Classical courthouse completed in 1936. Designed by Cass Gilbert, it was his last building, as he died while it was under construction. It is named for the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a towering figure in the struggle for civil rights, who in 1954, prior to his service on the Court, famously argued and won Brown v. Board of Education, the decision that struck down de jure segregation in American schools. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was named for Marshall by federal legislation in 2003. The building contains 35 courtrooms. Sixteen are original to the courthouse: Five in the base and eleven in the tower, including the historic United States court of appeals courtroom.

The building is divided into a distinct base, shaft and crown. The 6-story base is irregularly shaped, expressing the shape of the lot. The back of the building, toward Cardinal Place, is rounded, and the facades along Pearl Street and St. Andrew's Plaza each have a pair of engaged columns flanked by pilasters. These are all narrow street, however, and it is the grand colonnaded portico on the Foley Square front of the building that forms the visual base of the entire composition. Here, the building projects slightly forward, emphasizing the base. The portico, approached by a very broad flight of granite steps, is supported by a colonnade consisting of ten 4-story unfluted Corinthian columns and is flanked by piers framed by pilasters. A frieze above bears the inscription "UNITED STATES COURT HOUSE". This entablature, adorned with guilloche motifs above the piers at each end, is surmounted by a dentiled cornice and a low attic story pierced by square windows separated by carved pilasters. At each end of the attic floor there is a man's head carved in bas-relief. A bronze flagpole rises above the center of this base section of the building.

The square main tower is set back from the base and rises 20 stories above it. The first 16 floors are given vertical emphasis by the shafts on each side, which separate the tiers of windows. The windows are separated from each other horizontally by rectangular spandrel panels. Surmounting the 17th floor, a dentiled cornice sets off the three floors above it, which are treated as a unit. The lowest of these three floors, with small square windows, acts as a visual base for the other two, which have high, round-arched windows surmounted by small square ones, separated and enhanced by 2-story pilasters. The end bays at the corners are of solid masonry pierced by slit windows. This section is crowned by a pierced stone parapet with urns at the corners emphasizing the setback of the tower section above it.

The set-back portion, supporting the pyramidal roof, rises behind the parapet. Five bays on each side provide depth; the windows are separated by 3-story engaged Ionic columns with paired pilasters at the corners. A shallow cornice and low attic crowns the topmost section of the tower with eagles at the corners connected by low simple parapets. These elements form the base for the pyramidal roof which is adorned with gold leaf. At the base of the roof, a small pedimented dormer lends emphasis to the center of each side, while three tiers of diminutive dormers adorn the upper portions of the sides. The pyramid is crowned by a small gold-leafed lantern which has a railing at its base and is crowned by corner finials and a steep roof with an oblong finial.

Courtrooms have wood-paneled walls with colossal round arches and fluted Ionic pilasters; the Greek key molding seen in the main hall also enframes the ceilings of the tower courtrooms. The Court of Appeals courtroom ceiling also depicts nautical symbols.