Washington, D.C. - The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court building, commissioned by former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft and completed in 1935, was designed by Gilbert Cass (1859-1934), a noted architect whose work can be found in cities across the country, and encompasses structures as diverse as skyscrapers, academic buildings, libraries, museums, private residences, and even warehouses, and include the state capitols of Minnesota, Arkansas and West Virginia. As a proponent of the Beaux Arts style, his reputation declined during the age of Modernism, but he was a member of the design committee that guided and eventually approved the modernist design of Manhattan's groundbreaking Rockefeller Center.
Two marble statues by sculptor James Earle Fraser (1876-1953), designer of the Buffalo nickel, are on either side of the main entrance; on the left, a seated female figure called the “Contemplation of Justice,” and on the right a seated male figure called the “Guardian or Authority of Law.” Other examples of Fraser’s work figure prominently in many of Washington, D.C.’s most well-known structures. Fraser also designed the iconic Buffalo nickel, minted from 1913 to 1938.