Existing comment:
Site Selection
"There is no sound reason why the court should be cooped up in a six-by-nine room in the Capitol. Let the court have a handsome home of its own."
-- Wilmington (DE) News, January 1899
While proposals to relocate the Court surfaced throughout the nineteenth century, it is unclear when the current site was first suggested. By the mid-1870s, the area to the north of the future Library of Congress had been mentioned as a potential location for the Supreme Court. While the Library was completed in 1897, the Justices continued to meet in the former Senate Chamber. In 1902, the influential McMillan Plan, a comprehensive study for the future development of downtown Washington, endorsed the previously suggested location. Five years later, the Architect of the Capitol announced plans for a grand "Temple of Justice" to house the Court on the same site. Although the land had yet to be acquired by the federal government, there was now an association between the site and a future Court building. |