By Thomas Shess, Editor/Founder, PillartoPost.org Daily Magazine Style Blog-Take a good look at the photograph (above). Imagine yourself standing on the great steps of the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington DC and peering up at the West facing sculpture above the carved in stone phrase “Equal Justice Under Law.”
Will archaeologists three millennia in the future be able to hack away the jungle vines and decipher who are those carved figures?
If you know the answer you have information few Americans can recall off the top of our heads. Don’t fear ignorance. Those identities are one of Washington DC’s deepest forest-for-the-trees mysteries.
Not knowing who they are is a perfect metaphor for the building. The average citizen is clueless what goes on inside the building—not to mention what is carved above its entrance.
The answer is also a metaphor for Washington DC politics. There are tributes to past jurists, lofty allusions to Greek and Roman symbols of the law, pure patriotism at its center seat and two examples of cronyism at its Washington DC best.
The identities of the nine stone faces will be revealed at the end of this blog. But if you read on to learn who they are you must vow to others that this blog is one of the more interesting daily postings you’ve read today.
But first let’s talk about the architecture.
Built in 1935 in neoclassical design based on the work of American architect Cass Gilbert (1859-1934), the Supreme Court HQ sits on a trapezoidal lot facing the Library of Congress and the U.S. Capitol. Made up of three parts, a dominant temple of Roman derivation flanked by two wide horizontal wings. The temple, literally conceived of as the temple of justice, contains the structures most important functions.
Cass Gilbert Society blog describes the two statues separated by the 44 gray and white marble entry steps as James Earle Fraser's stern seated, the Authority of Law (on the south) and the Contemplation of Justice (on the north), guard the temple entrance.
Sixteen columns (and eight pilasters) are Gilbert's American variant of the Corinthian order where heraldic eagles are set between splayed volutes. The frieze of braziers hung with garlands (symbolic of the plenty existing in an ordered society) is particularly lavish.
In the pediment (the aforementioned mystery panel), Robert Aitken's central sculptural figures represent Liberty Enthroned Guarded by Order and Authority. They are attended by six allegorical figures symbolic of Counsel and Research, who were modeled after Americans responsible for bringing the Supreme Court and its quarters into being, although they are all shown in Roman garb.
Alas, even the symbolic togas can’t hide cronyism. Two of the pediment’s figures are the architect and the sculptor. Of course, they belong up there along with the symbol of American Liberty and its protectors do they not?
Now, you have the identities of five of the nine carved faces.
Let’s digress to the East facing pediment on the other side of the Supreme Court building. The Cass Gilbert Society admits the art work there “is rarely noticed. The East front depicts a related theme, Justice the Guardian of Liberty. Hermon A. MacNeil's central figures are representations of great law givers, Moses, Confucius, and Solon. Their supporting figures are symbolic of the functions of the Supreme Court: Means of Enforcing the Law, Tempering Justice with Mercy, Settlement of Disputes between the States. In a secondary group is Protection of Maritime Rights, Pondering of Judgment, Tribute to this Court, and the Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. This in-antis Corinthian portico, while less fully developed than the entrance, is symbolically important, as the chief justice's suite of rooms, directly behind it....”
How about those expensive front doors?
Once again we quote the Cass Gilbert Society’s prose: “...The bronze entrance doors and the frieze of the Supreme Court chamber are the two major remaining foci of Gilbert's iconographical program, and they both depict the historical development of law throughout the world. John Donnelly, Jr., modeled the thirteen-ton bronze doors, each with eight panels. On the left the scenes are derived from classical historical and literary sources, the Shield of Achilles (Greek law), Praetor's Edict (Roman law), and the Justinian Code (religious law). The panels on the right illustrate events in Anglo-American legal history: Magna Carta, Westminster Statute, Coke, James I, and Story, Marshall. On both doors, the most remote events are at the bottom, and they move chronologically to the top as they move from laws themselves to their application or enforcement. Hence, like its neighbor the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court places American achievements within the broad continuum of human history...”
As for the rest of the building, mainly the flanking office space, we turn to the inflated description of the architect’s website in language that makes even the most ardent first year law student blush with envy. “...The bronze entrance doors and the frieze of the Supreme Court chamber are the two major remaining foci of Gilbert's iconographical program, and they both depict the historical development of law throughout the world. John Donnelly, Jr., modeled the thirteen-ton bronze doors, each with eight panels. On the left the scenes are derived from classical historical and literary sources, the Shield of Achilles (Greek law), Praetor's Edict (Roman law), and the Justinian Code (religious law). The panels on the right illustrate events in Anglo-American legal history: Magna Carta, Westminster Statute, Coke, James I, and Story, Marshall. On both doors, the most remote events are at the bottom, and they move chronologically to the top as they move from laws themselves to their application or enforcement. Hence, like its neighbor the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court places American achievements within the broad continuum of human history...”
Who would have thought such architectural insight be so exhausting.
Finally, we come to the answer of the day. The identities of the nine sculpted figures atop the West facing entrance of the Supreme Court building.
Name of the work is “Liberty Enthroned Guarded by Order and Authority. They are attended by six allegorical figures symbolic of Counsel and Research who were modeled after Americans responsible for bringing the Supreme Court and its quarters into being, although they are all shown in Roman garb. The muscular reclining figures at the edges of the composition are (left to right):
1. Chief Justice William Howard Taft as a young man.
2. Architect Cass Gilbert.
3. Secretary of State Elihu Root.
4. Symbol of Order
5. Lady Liberty (you might recognize her from her statue in New York harbor).
6. Symbol of Authority
7. The pediment sculptor Robert Aitken.
8. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes
9. Chief Justice John Marshall.
To best put all of this in perspective we turn to the prologue of the 2008 tome “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court” by Jeffrey Toobin:
“...The architect Cass Gilbert had grand ambition for his design of a new home for the Supreme Court—what he called “the greatest tribunal in the world, one of the three great elements of our national government.” Gilbert knew that the approach to the Court, as much as the structure itself, would define the experience of the building, but the site presented a challenge. Other exalted Washington edifices—the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial—inspired awe with their processional approaches.
But in 1928 Congress had designated for the Court a cramped and asymmetrical plot of land, wedged tightly between the Capitol and the Library of Congress. How could architect Gilbert convey to visitors the magnitude and importance of the judicial process taking place within the Court’s walls?
The answer, he decided, was steps.
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Gilbert pushed back the wings of the building, so that the public face of the building would be a portico with a massive and imposing stairway. Visitors would not have to walk a long distance to enter, but few would forget the experience of mounting those 44 steps to the double row of eight massive columns supporting the roof. The walk up the stairs would be the central symbolic experience of The Supreme Court, a physical manifestation of the American march to justice. The stairs separated the Court from the everyday world—and especially frdom the earthly concerns of the politicians in the Capitol—and announced that the justices would operate, literally, on a higher plane...”
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