THE BUILDING:
"The Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building (TMFJB) houses offices that support the work of the United States Courts, including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the Federal Judicial Center, and the United States Sentencing Commission.
It is located at 1 Columbus Circle NE in Washington D.C. adjacent to Union Station, a few blocks from the United States Capitol. It was completed in 1992 and was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. It features a dramatic five-story tall glass atrium at its main entrance.
The building was named after Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court.
It is under the jurisdiction of the Architect of the Capitol as part of the United States Capitol Complex."
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"The Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building is an administrative center for the federal court system located adjacent to Union Station. Its construction completed the spacial enclosure of Columbus Circle and was considered a long overdue complement to the city's train station and post office. In federal ownership since the 1920s, the site prior to the building's construction had been a parking lot.
In 1985, Architect of the Capitol George White was authorized to begin studying the possibility of providing an office building for the federal courts. He invited the country's leading architects and developers to submit proposals for the new building; they were to present ideas combining architectural solutions with creative financing options to "minimize or eliminate initial capital investment by the United States through the use of public-private partnerships or non governmental sources of financing." The invitation was an innovative scheme to provide the judicial branch with a first-class building without resorting to the usual appropriation process. Financial and real-estate consultants were retained to advise the Architect of the Capitol in matters relating to market analysis, cost evaluation, business deal structure, and implementation. Forty-three development firms were contacted, of which nineteen indicated an interest in the project. From this list, five developer-architect teams were asked to submit proposals. A jury unanimously selected the team of Edward Larraby Barnes/John M. Y. Lee & Partners as the architects and Boston Properties as the developer. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist approved the selection on January 13, 1989.
By the terms of the innovative financing package, the Architect of the Capitol agreed to lease the site to the developer for thirty years. He also agreed to lease the finished building for thirty years, at which time it would revert to the government at no cost. Rents would be used to amortize the privately raised debt. Not since the 1790s, when the board of commissioners attempted to finance the Capitol and White House through the sale of city lots, had such unconventional financing been tried on a federal construction project. Unlike the commissioners' bungled efforts, however, this financing scheme proved entirely satisfactory.
Ground was broken for the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building on April 4, 1990, and tenants began to occupy the finished building on October 1, 1992. It cost $101 million, providing more than 600,000 square feet of rentable space within its overall million-square-foot interior."
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THE PERSON:
"Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October, 1967 until October, 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African American justice.
Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He argued more cases before the United States Supreme Court than anyone else in history. He served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after being appointed by President John F. Kennedy and then served as the Solicitor General after being appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.
He spent his tenure on the highest court in the land establishing a record for supporting the voiceless American. He began his early career fighting to dismantle racial segregation and as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall left a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless."
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