The Howard T. Markey National Courts Building (formerly the National Courts Building) is a courthouse in Washington, D.C., which houses the United States Court of Federal Claims and the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It is located at 717 Madison Place NW, east of Lafayette Square and north of the White House, and borders the Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House at 721 Madison Place NW, the former Cosmos Club building at 725 Madison Place NW, and the Cutts-Madison House at 1520 H Street NW.
Originally, the plan for the courthouse and an office building for White House staff had called for the historic houses on both sides of Lafayette Square to be razed. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, a believer in historic preservation, urged President John F. Kennedy to find an alternative solution. Kennedy tapped architect John Carl Warnecke to come up with a plan to preserve the houses. Warnecke and Jacqueline Kennedy envisioned that the courthouse and the New Executive Office Building, a twin structure to be built on the other side of Lafayette Square, would form a backdrop for the historic houses. The two buildings remain distinctive in their own right.
The Building Committee included Chief Judge John Marvin Jones, Commissioner Marion Tinsley Bennett, and Chief Commissioner Arnold Wilson Cowen. The building was dedicated on September 20, 1967.
The courthouse was initially built for the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the United States Court of Claims, so when the two courts were abolished and merged to create the Federal Circuit in 1982, they already had a domicile in common.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed legislation renaming the National Courts Building after Howard Thomas Markey. The re-dedication celebration was held on October 23, 1998, during a special joint session of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the Court of Federal Claims.
Famous quotes containing the words howard t, howard, national, courts and/or building:
“The laboring man and the trade-unionist, if I understand him, asks only equality before the law. Class legislation and unequal privilege, though expressly in his favor, will in the end work no benefit to him or to society.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
—Julius J. Epstein, screenwriter, Philip Epstein, screenwriter, Howard Koch, screenwriter, and Michael Curtiz. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
““With the gracious consent of the audience, you will be made to don the red tophat”Ma token phrase that the courts had evolved, whose true meaning was known to every schoolboy.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“People do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest, and keeps incessantly whirling around, building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it: a mouse in a pitch barrel.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)