Spring Street Courthouse
- Architects
- Gilbert Stanley Underwood Louis A. Simon
- Year
- 1940
- Style
- Streamline Moderne
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The Spring Street Courthouse, originally the United States Court House, is a Streamline Moderne building completed in 1940 that combined a post office and federal courthouse under one roof. Designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood and Louis A. Simon, it housed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California until the district was redrawn in 1966, then served the Central District of California until federal courts moved out in 2016; it is now used by the Los Angeles Superior Court.
the building
Site of Mendez v. Westminster. The courthouse was the site of Gonzalo Mendez et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County, a major civil rights case that advanced the desegregation of Mexican-American schoolchildren and served as a precursor to later school desegregation rulings.
the style
Underwood and Simon's Streamline Moderne design gave the building smooth, horizontal, machine-age lines, a departure from the classical vocabulary typically used for federal courthouses of the period.
More on Streamline Modernesignificance
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006 as the U.S. Court House and Post Office, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012 for its role in Mendez v. Westminster.
nearby
- Pico House
- Los Angeles City Hall
- Los Angeles County Hall of Records
- Caltrans District 7 Headquarters
- Los Angeles Union Station
- Higgins Building