Byron White US Courthouse

It was another HOT day in Denver! I had a couple of errands to run which I did early before it got too hot. I found myself across the street from this beautiful neoclassical building. Originally opened in 1916 as the Denver Post Office Courthouse, the Post Office was relocated in the 1990s. The building formerly served as the United States District Court for the district of Colorado and it is now used as the United States (Federal) Court Of Appeals for the 10th Circuit (which includes Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, Utah and Oklahoma). Next step from here is the US Supreme Court! In 1973 it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1994 it was renamed to honour US Supreme Court justice Byron White, a Colorado native. The outside of the building is made from Yule marble from the town of Marble, Colorado. Stone from this same quarry was used for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

I did go inside but no pictures are allowed which is a great pity because it was beautiful! I enjoyed the air conditioning while I spent about 90 minutes looking at various exhibits, the main one being about Justice White himself. Not only did he serve on the US Supreme Court, but he had been a Rhodes Scholar and had also played professional NFL football as a young man, for both Pittsburgh and Detroit. During WW2 he had served as an intelligence officer in the US Navy.

There were no cases being heard today so the public area was a bit of a ghost town, but that was to my advantage as one of the security guards unlocked one of the courtrooms for me to see, and also the private chambers of Byron White. After he ‘retired’ from the Supreme Court, he still dealt with some appeals here before he died in 2002, and so had chambers here.