OCTOBER 7, 1935-Supreme Court’s New Home Inspires Sneezes as Well as Awe
THE WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS — MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1935
Supreme Court’s New Home Inspires Sneezes as Well as Awe
By ERNIE PYLE
The grand new Supreme Court building will never be complete till they put a couple of St. Bernard dogs out front to carry rum to the travelers stricken with snow blindness trying to reach the entrance.
I paid my first visit to this $9,000,000 Parthenon last week. It sits back, majestically, half a block from the street. This half block is one vast expanse of glittering, sheet-white marble pavement.
The bright sun spatters down on this white marble, and comes right back up again into your face. It is like a sunny day on a field of snow.
You know how some people have to sneeze when they look at the sun. Well, this white marble reflection started to get me, and I gave off a couple of tentative snorts, and then I went at it in earnest. Sneeze, wheeze, sneeze. There were other people around, and I was embarrassed, until I heard them starting to sneeze too.
By that time my eyes had begun to water, everything had turned red, and I was half blind. I couldn’t see the other sneezers, but I could hear them, to right, to left, and all around, like honest delegates to the International Hay Fever Convention. With handkerchiefs over our eyes, and tears on our cheeks, we finally reached the shade of the main doorway, and safety.
I had heard about this before I went up there, and didn’t think it was true, but it is true.
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The building was closed, all except the main corridor, for a final shining up before the Supreme Court’s first session in its new home.
But when I told them I was a poor boy, without any papa or mama, who had walked all the way from Mississippi just to see this wonderful new building, they got out a special guide and took me all over the place.
The only big word I can think of to describe it is “magnificent.” But when you utter that word in those marble halls it rattles around like a dry bean, it is such an insufficient word.
In my common opinion, the building is too grand, too magnificent. It is like having a 20-room house just for me and my dog.
Practically everything is marble—outside, inside, the walls, the floors. More marble was used in this than in any building ever built in this world—more than 1700 freight car loads.
All over, the court building is as white as a sheet of paper, and the middle rises high above each side, and triumphs in the forefront in 16 great marble columns, 50 feet high, 6 feet thick, each weighing 100 tons.
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Inside, the building is such a maze of stairs and doors and wide, white corridors that you can easily lose your way. You can’t help but feel there is too much apple for the seed. The Supreme Court chamber itself, in size, bears about the same ratio to the entire building as does the watch pocket to a pair of pants. It holds but 263 spectators, only 10 per cent more than the old chamber in the Capitol.
Even the total of the nine justices’ suites forms only a small portion of the building’s whole space. The justices’ offices are not elaborate. Each is a three-room suite, not large, but finished from top to bottom in unpolished white oak. I have never seen rooms more gently, more tastefully done.
I warmed myself at an imaginary fire in the black marble fireplace of Mr. Justice Brandeis, who had not yet moved in, and I wished as I stood there that sometime, somehow, I might be blessed with just a little share of his wisdom.
The enormous remainder of the building contains countless offices for clerks and minor officials of the court. There is even a handsome office just for the Attorney General when he journeys up that way.
There is a high-ceilinged library, half as long as the building, for the use of lawyers. Then there is a smaller library, just for the justices. There is a huge private dining room, and a luncheon room, and a pantry and kitchen that could supply a hotel. And a cafeteria for the public. And immense conference rooms, all paneled and red-velveted and crystal-chandeliered.
I would like to know what Mr. Justice Brandeis thinks of this pomp for which he has come to Washington. But I suppose I shall never know.
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