DESIGN. ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF U.S. SUPREME COURT BUILDING

 

The completed Supreme Court Building, circa 1935.

How Architect Cass Gilbert and Chief Justice William Howard Taft Gave the Supreme Court a Temple of Its Own 

On the east side of the United States Capitol, a broad flight of marble steps rises toward sixteen Corinthian columns and a promise carved in stone: Equal Justice Under Law. 

The words are among the most familiar in Washington, yet the building beneath them is comparatively young. The United States Supreme Court did not occupy a permanent home until 1935—nearly a century and a half after the Court first convened. 

Before then, the nation’s highest tribunal was an architectural tenant. It met briefly in New York and Philadelphia and, after the federal government settled in Washington, moved among several rooms in the Capitol. From 1860 onward, the justices heard arguments in the Capitol’s former Senate Chamber, an elegant but increasingly inadequate space for a judiciary claiming equal standing with Congress and the presidency. 

William Howard Taft

The man who determined to change that was Chief Justice William Howard Taft. 

Taft remains the only American to have served both as president of the United States and chief justice of the Supreme Court. He regarded the Court’s borrowed quarters as cramped, inconvenient and symbolically undignified. Congress had its Capitol. The president had the White House. The judiciary, Taft believed, deserved an independent home of comparable consequence. 

His campaign succeeded in 1928, when Congress established a commission to oversee construction of a Supreme Court building. The following year, architect Cass Gilbert received the commission. Gilbert was already among the country’s most prominent architects. He had designed New York’s Woolworth Building, the Minnesota State Capitol and several important federal structures. 

Cass Gilbert

For the Supreme Court, however, he was asked to create something more than an office building. Taft wanted architecture that would convey the dignity, permanence and authority of the law. Neither man lived to see the result. Taft died in 1930. Gilbert died in 1934, a year before the building opened. The work was completed by Cass Gilbert Jr. and associate architect John R. Rockart during the tenure of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. 

A Roman Temple on Capitol Hill 

Gilbert’s design drew upon the architecture of ancient Rome, but it avoided the decorative exuberance associated with some Beaux-Arts monuments. The Supreme Court would be imposing, but not flamboyant. Its authority would come from proportion, symmetry and disciplined classical form. 

The west façade, facing the Capitol, resembles a monumental Roman temple. A ceremonial staircase rises from the marble plaza to a deep portico supported by sixteen Corinthian columns. Above them, a triangular pediment filled with allegorical sculpture crowns the entrance. The central block is flanked by lower, quieter wings. 

This arrangement allowed the building to possess the necessary grandeur without overwhelming the smaller houses and institutional buildings of Capitol Hill. 

From across First Street, the portico holds its own against the Capitol while remaining visually subordinate to it. The effect is deliberate. Congress may occupy the larger building, but the Court stands apart from it—architecturally independent and facing its legislative counterpart across an open plaza. 

Gilbert’s classicism was not intended merely to imitate antiquity. To early-20th-century Americans, Greek and Roman forms suggested order, reason, civic virtue and the durability of republican government. The building’s columns and pediments gave physical form to an ideal: that law should rise above political fashion and endure beyond any one generation of judges or lawmakers. 

American Law Carved in American Stone 

Although Roman in inspiration, the building is emphatically American in its materials. A steel frame supports an exterior faced primarily with white Vermont marble. Georgia marble lines the four interior courtyards, while Alabama marble appears in the corridors and entrance halls. 

Offices were finished with quarter-sawn American white oak used for doors, floors and paneling. The choice of materials gave the Court both national character and visual unity. 

Light reflects from the exterior marble, causing the building to change subtly with the weather. In strong sun it can appear almost brilliant; beneath Washington’s winter skies it becomes gray, severe and suitably judicial. 

Inside, Gilbert arranged a ceremonial progression from the entrance to the courtroom. Visitors pass through the Great Hall, where paired rows of marble columns support a coffered ceiling. The long space functions almost like a processional nave, directing the eye and the visitor toward the courtroom doors. 

For all the grandeur surrounding it, the courtroom itself is relatively intimate. Taft had admired the proportions of the Court’s former chamber in the Capitol, and Gilbert preserved something of that closeness. 

The room was designed for concentration rather than spectacle. Lawyers stand only a short distance from the bench, and the justices sit close enough to interrupt, question and challenge them directly. 

Behind the public spaces, Gilbert carefully separated offices, conference rooms and working areas from visitor circulation. Privacy and quiet were essential. The building had to function not only as a national monument but also as the daily workplace of a small and unusually powerful institution. 

Sculpture Notes: 

Sculpture forms part of the building’s argument. At the base of the west staircase sit two monumental marble figures by sculptor James Earle Fraser. To the left is Contemplation of Justice, a seated woman holding a figure of Justice in one hand while resting the other upon a book of law. 

To the right is Authority of Law, a powerful male figure holding a tablet and sword. They are not decorative afterthoughts. Together they embody two qualities upon which a judicial system depends: reflection and enforcement, thought and authority. 

EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW—THE WEST PEDIMENT. The west pediment (above) extends the theme through allegorical figures representing justice, wisdom, history and legal tradition.  Sculptor Robert I. Aitken placed Liberty Enthroned at the center of the Supreme Court’s western pediment, holding the scales of justice and guarded by the figures of Order and Authority. The six figures surrounding them represent Council and Research, but they are also portraits of men associated with the Court and its building: Chief Justices William Howard Taft, John Marshall and Charles Evans Hughes; architect Cass Gilbert; Senator Elihu Root; and Aitken himself. 

On the opposite side of the building, the east façade bears another inscription: The two inscriptions create a dialogue across the structure. One promises equality beneath the law; the other insists that justice protects freedom. Between them stands the institution charged with interpreting both principles. The Court has often been described as an American “temple of justice,” and Gilbert’s building makes the phrase literal. Its staircase, colonnade, inscriptions and sculpture transform a functioning government office into a civic monument. 

Finally, a Permanent Address 

In December 1933, the West Portico is recognizable, but scaffolding surrounds the Corinthian-style columns and the sculptured pediment in front remains an exposed steel framework.

The cornerstone was laid on October 13, 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression. Construction continued as unemployment and economic hardship reshaped the country beyond the building site. 

The Supreme Court Building was completed on April 4, 1935, at a cost of approximately $9.4 million—slightly less than the $9.74 million authorized by Congress. The savings were returned to the U.S. Treasury.

It opened to visitors during the summer, and on October 7, 1935, the justices took their seats there for the first time. Its completion gave the judiciary what Taft had sought: a permanent address and an architectural identity distinct from the other branches of government. 

Nearly a century later, the building remains one of Washington’s clearest statements of classical civic architecture. It is monumental without being theatrical, richly finished without appearing lavish and symbolic without surrendering its practical purpose. 

Cass Gilbert designed the Court to appear permanent, rational and removed from the turbulence of daily politics. 

History has shown that the institution within is rarely so serene. Arguments decided in its courtroom have altered elections, expanded and restricted rights, reshaped the balance of federal power and stirred generations of public protest. 

The marble promises constancy. The law inside continues to change. 

Flanking the west-front steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Building are two monumental 1935 sculptures by James Earle Fraser. To the left, Contemplation of Justice depicts a seated woman studying a small figure of blindfolded Justice holding scales, while resting her arm upon a book of law—an image of judgment shaped by reflection and reason. To the right, Authority of Law portrays a powerful male figure holding a tablet of laws and a sheathed sword, symbolizing the strength required to enforce the Court’s decisions. Together, the sculptures express the balance at the center of American justice: careful deliberation on one side, lawful authority on the other. Illustration was narrowed by photoshop for space limitations.