Suffolk County Courthouse
- Architect
- George Albert Clough
- Style
- Second Empire
- City
- Boston, MA
The John Adams Courthouse, originally the Suffolk County Courthouse, was built in 1893 on Pemberton Square as the major work of George Clough, Boston's first city architect. The six-story granite building now houses the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the state's highest court, and the Massachusetts Appeals Court, and stands as one of the city's few surviving monumental civic buildings from the late 19th century.
the building
Fifteen-bay granite facade. The courthouse is a six-story granite structure fifteen bays wide, its eclectic Second Empire composition rising from an elevated-basement ground floor of small arched windows to larger rectangular windows above, divided by a stone stringcourse.
the style
The building is in the Second Empire style, an eclectic composition that Clough carried from an elevated granite basement up through fifteen bays of round-arched and rectangular windows.
More on Second Empirethe architect
George Albert Clough served as Boston's first city architect, and the Suffolk County Courthouse was his major work in that role.
significance
The courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and remains one of Boston's few surviving late-19th-century monumental civic buildings.
nearby
- Howard Athenaeum
- Boston Transit Commission Building
- Suffolk Savings Bank
- Boston Athenæum
- Tremont House
- King's Chapel