Cornerstone

Overalled workmen put down their tools and the clang of machinery was briefly hushed one grey morning last week as a distinguished throng in top hats and cutaways congregated about an unfinished mass of steel and stone east of the Capitol Plaza. Close to the rising marble wall of the skeletal building stood a temporary platform up to which President Hoover marched. He removed his silk hat. The throng did likewise. Behind the President came Chief Justice Hughes and seven associate justices of the Supreme Court, all in black robes, five in black skull caps.* Ranged on seats below them were Secretary Stimson, Attorney General Mitchell, Secretary Adams, French Ambassador Claude!. Rufus Daniel Isaacs. Marquess of Reading, onetime British Ambassador to the U. S., Paul Reynaud. onetime French Minister of Justice. President Newton Wesley Rowell of the Canadian Bar Association and several thousand members of the American Bar Association which was holding its annual meeting in Washington. They were all present to witness the laying of the cornerstone of the Supreme Court's new home.

The ceremony, presided over by President Guy Atwood Thompson of the Bar Association, opened with a speech by John William Davis, representing the Bar of the Supreme Court. Democrat Davis' friends hope some day, in the event of a Roosevelt victory next month, to see him on the high bench. Lofty of thought, polished of diction, charming of manner, Lawyer Davis declared: "This noble edifice . . . will contain our hearthstone, our workshop, our temple. . . . When the winds of political sophistry threaten to tear from her moorings the Ship of State and when the beating waves of impatient change would bear her out to the unknown deep, it is the voice of the Constitution speaking here that will bid the winds and waves be still. . . . This is to be the abode of the Peacemaker. Here, armed in his native right, one man alone is to prove stronger than a thousand."

As Mr. Davis spoke it began to drizzle. A White House chauffeur carried a lap robe to Mrs. Hoover in the audience. Umbrellas popped up here & there. When she saw her husband sitting bareheaded in the rain, the First Lady scribbled a note on an old envelope, had it passed up to the platform. Mr. Hoover read it. smiled, reached for his hat. Lord Reading, who had been looking miserable, quickly did likewise. When Mr. Davis finished, he shruggled quickly into his overcoat, turned up its collar. His thin white hair damp with rain. Chief Justice Hughes delivered his speech at an oratorical gallop. He recounted the Supreme Court's many travels, spoke of its spiritual endowment in its old home, predicted that few of today's members would long enjoy the comforts of its new building.

Taking a tiny silver trowel with a mahagony handle--made from furnishings in the old court chamber--President Hoover dabbed a butter pat of mortar on stone. Chief Justice Hughes heaped the trowel full. Mr. Thompson did likewise. Then a master mason scraped off their dabs, spread a skilful smear of his own while four workmen gently swung into place a three-and-one-half-ton block of Vermont marble inscribed "A. D. 1932." Within the cornerstone Mrs. William Howard Taft, whose late husband as Chief Justice was, more than any other man, personally responsible for the new building, had placed a lead box containing ceramic photographs of the present court and of Chief Justice Taft, a Congressional Directory, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the Attorney General's last annual report, a World Almanac, and the latest volume of Supreme Court opinions. As the stone clumped down to rest for centuries the Marine Band closed the ceremony with "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Like an orphan living around with relatives, the Supreme Court has had many a makeshift home since it first sat, with no business to transact, in the Royal Exchange, New York City, in 1790. That same year with the rest of the Government it was moved to Philadelphia where it occupied a back room on the second floor of City Hall. In 1800 it was transferred to Washington and assigned a clerk's office off the old Senate chamber in the unfinished Capitol. There John Marshall became Chief Justice. In 1810 the Court was put into the Capitol basement directly under the old Senate chamber. When in 1814 the Capitol was burned by the British, Supreme Court sessions were held in a rented building on Pennsylvania Avenue S. E. Four years later the court was back in the Capitol basement where it remained until 1860. Then the Senate moved to its present quarters in the Capitol's north wing and the Supreme Court came out of the cellar to sit where it still sits augustly.

Long had Supreme Court justices, wedded to tradition and their musty old quarters, resisted proposals to move. Chief Justice Taft finally argued his colleagues around to the wisdom of having a bigger & better home more befitting the court's dignity and importance. In 1926 Congress passed the necessary legislation, authorizing an appropriation of $9,700,000. Chief Justice Taft selected a seven-acre site across the Capitol Plaza and beside the Library of Congress. Condemned and demolished was an old red brick building in which Congress sat after the Capitol's burning, Confederate prisoners were housed during the Civil War and, later, the National Woman's Party made its headquarters.

Architect of the Supreme Court's new home is Cass Gilbert whose design is along classic Corinthian lines, with simple masses carefully proportioned. Builder is George A. Fuller Co. The building's overall measurements are 385 ft. by 304 ft. With the exterior finished in Vermont marble, Alabama marble will be used on the interior, Georgia marble will be used in the four courtyards. At Architect Gilbert's insistence and to the dismay of penny-pinching Congressmen, the Court chamber itself will be finished in Italian and Spanish marbles--a fact so far discreetly soft-pedaled.

Today justices do most of their work at home; in the new building each will have a three-room suite connecting with the court room by private corridors. In the basement will be space for the justices to park their cars. They will have two conference rooms in which to meet, argue and decide cases. They will lunch together in a private dining room on the second floor over the Chief Justice's suite. They will sit on a high bench in a court room half again as large as the one they now occupy. Their upstairs library will hold more than 330,000 volumes. Their new home is scheduled for occupancy Dec. 14, 1934.

*Absent was the eighth, Mr. Justice Brandeis whose 75 years make it unsafe for him to be outdoors in threatening weather.

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