page_title: Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: English: Post office in Chicago Loop at the Everett Dirksen Courthouse. Building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, who has donated her works to the public domain, via the Library of Congress (where she has a special collection). See https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006678355
context_page_description: The Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse, commonly referred to as the Dirksen Federal Building, is a skyscraper in the Chicago Loop at 219 South Dearborn Street. It was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1964. The building is 384 feet tall with 30 floors; it was named for U.S. Congressman Everett Dirksen. The building houses the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the United States Bankruptcy Court, the United States Marshal for the Northern District of Illinois, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and local offices for various court-related federal agencies, such as the Federal Public Defender, United States Probation Service and United States Trustee. It is one of three buildings making up the modernist Federal Plaza complex designed by van der Rohe, along with the U.S. Post Office and the Kluczynski Federal Building. Separate from the Federal Plaza, but opposite the Kluczynski Building across Jackson Boulevard, is the Metcalfe Federal Building.
context_section_description: The Federal Center extends over two blocks; a one-block site, bounded by Jackson, Clark, Adams, and Dearborn streets, contains the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and U.S. Post Office Loop Station, while a parcel on an adjacent block to the east contains the courthouse. A glass-enclosed great hall, 100 feet (30 m) wide and 25 feet (7.6 m) high, spans the center of the courthouse, serving as a visual gateway through the complex. From State Street on the east, one can look west down Quincy Street, through the courthouse, across Dearborn Street to the central plaza and post office beyond.
  To its northwest is the freestanding Loop Station post office, which is one story with two workroom levels below grade. Directly across the street from the Kluczynski building is the thirty-story Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. The courthouse contains 1.4 million gross square feet of space and is set at a right angle to the Federal Building high-rise across Dearborn Street. The Dirksen courthouse was designed with fifteen, two-story courtrooms located on the top ten stories of the building. Courtrooms were located away from the curtain walls to reduce audio and visual distractions. The simple but elegant book-matched black-walnut paneling and molded-plywood spectator benches are lit by ceiling fixtures covered with an aluminum grid. During the 1990s, additional courtrooms were created within the building in a style complementing the original details; Mies's initial design planned for future expansion of this nature.
  The simple and well-proportioned steel-and-glass design of the Chicago Federal Center epitomizes the minimalist architectural approach favored by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  The structural framing of the buildings is formed of high-tensile bolted steel and concrete. The exterior curtain walls are defined by projecting steel I-beam mullions covered with flat black graphite paint, characteristic of Mies's designs. The balance of the curtain walls are of bronze-tinted glass panes, framed in shiny aluminum, and separated by steel spandrels, also covered with flat black graphite paint. This organization emphasizes the impressive height of the sleek towers. Franz Schulze, a scholar of Mies's work, has praised "Mies's uncompromising devotion to principle, together with his vaunted sensitivity to proportion and structural detail and the organizational scale, [that] combine to give the complex a monumental urban presence." The entire complex is organized on a 28-foot grid pattern subdivided into six 4-foot, 8-inch modules. This pattern extends from the granite-paved plaza into the ground-floor lobbies of the two towers, where the floors and elevator lobby walls are also granite. The lines of the grid continue vertically up the buildings, integrating each component of the complex. The 42-story, John C. Kluczynski Federal Building is the tallest of the three buildings. Both the Kluczynski and Dirksen buildings are elevated on open colonnades, called pilotis, at the plaza level.
  In the early 1970s, the U.S. General Services Administration, under its Art in Architecture program, commissioned a steel sculpture for the plaza from the celebrated artist Alexander Calder. His creation, entitled Flamingo, was unveiled on October 25, 1974. The 53-foot-tall steel stabile, with its bright red color and graceful curves, provides a striking contrast to the dark, angular steel and glass curtain walls of the Federal Center buildings. In 1998, the stabile was conserved and lighting was added.
  In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, Chicago Federal Plaza was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places  by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component (AIA Illinois).
caption: US Post Office Loop Station at the Dirksen Building.  Photo by Carol M. Highsmith
exif: {}