Moakley United States Courthouse & Harborpark

This federal courthouse serves as headquarters for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The building houses two appeals courtrooms, 19 district courtrooms, six magistrate’s courtrooms, 42 judge’s chambers, a law library, offices for the U.S. attorney, and extensive facilities to support the operations of the federal courts. It has a total floor area of 765,000 square feet, distributed over ten floors above grade and one below.

To maximize the public benefit of its prime waterfront location, the courthouse incorporates a broad array of services and amenities, including a café, information center, and excursion boat ticket office in an arcaded waterfront loggia, as well as spaces for exhibitions, lectures, meetings, and dining in the Great Hall overlooking the Harborpark. Occupying the site’s entire 850-foot-long waterfront, the latter is landscaped with trees and plants indigenous to the New England seashore.

The decision to build the Courthouse on this highly visible waterfront site was a command to give voice, through architecture, to the aspirations and beliefs that underlie the American system of jurisprudence.

The park is directly accessible from the Courthouse via a circular entry pavilion located at the midpoint of the conoidal glass wall that embraces the Great Lawn, an open space constituting the shared symbolic center of both Courthouse and Harborpark.