Old Supreme Court Chamber

The chamber interior, including an upper-level public gallery, was finally completed early in 1805, just before the start of the Samuel Chase impeachment trial.

The Supreme Court barely had the opportunity to hear cases in the chamber before the justices fled Washington in the face of advancing British forces during the War of 1812.

Latrobe resigned two years later, under his successor, Charles Bulfinch, that the chamber was completed in 1819, in time for the next session of the Supreme Court.

During that time, the court heard arguments on such landmark cases as McCulloch v. Maryland, Gibbons v. Ogden, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and United States v. The Amistad.

From 1960 to 1972, the chamber was a rather mundane storage room until Congress voted to restore it to its historic antebellum appearance, which everyday citizens can visit and see.

Still existing furnishings in the possession of the United States Capitol were sent to the chamber, as well as donated items such as Roger Taney's chair.

Above one fireplace is a clock that is said apocryphally to be ordered by Roger Taney and set five minutes forward under his direction to promote promptness in the court proceedings.

She is accompanied by America, depicted as a winged youth, holding the United States Constitution as a star overhead shines light upon the document.

[3] On July 22, 2020, amid the George Floyd protests, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 305–113 to remove a bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (as well as statues honoring figures who were part of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War) from the U.S. Capitol and replace it with a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was a champion of civil rights.

[9] On February 9, 2023, the bust of Roger Taney was officially removed from the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., thanks to an effort led by Maryland Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, as well as Maryland Democratic Representative Steny Hoyer, to be replaced by a new work of art honoring Justice Thurgood Marshall.