ABSTRACT
Judiciary Square is best known as the setting for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and forecourt of the National Building Museum, formerly the United States Pension Building. The square itself is part of a larger tract in the District of Columbia, designated “Judiciary Square” by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and reserved for the Supreme Court of the United States in Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 plan of Washington, DC. This area, defined by G Street to the north, Indiana Avenue to the south, and 4th and 5th Streets to the east and west respectively, is one of the original seventeen reservations set aside for specific public use in the national capital. Though it never housed the Supreme Court, it has, since the early nineteenth century, been the center of the District of Columbia’s local court, federal district court and home to local government agencies and, at one time, the district’s city hall (Stanley 1968: 21).
