The Louisanna Supreme Court Building near the french quarter hotels of Beaux Arts-style and originally called the “New Courthouse Building” was originally built from 1908-1910. Its purpose was to “clear slums” while replacing the Cabildo and Presbytère as the seat of local justice. For fifty years the Louisiana Supreme Court and a spate of lower courts and offices drew swarms of glad-handed politicians, judges and lawyers, plaintiffs and defendants, juries and commissioners, clerks and secretaries, librarians, and even an occasional historian through its sculpted hallways. But in 1958 the Supreme Court departed for newer quarters and others soon followed. The Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Museum moved in, but when they left, the building closed and was allowed to decay. After an extensive renovation in 2004, the Louisiana Supreme Court moved back into the courthouse, and were joined by Court of Appeal-Fourth Circuit, the State Judicial Administrator’s Office, the Law Library of Louisiana, an Attorney General’s Office and, in time, a legal museum. The building is guarded by a statue of former United States Chief Justice, Edward Douglas White.
