The main hall, spanning the width of the building along Centre Street, is decorated with marble floors and walls and a coffered ceiling.

[4][5] The building also abuts St. Andrew Church to the southeast and the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, jail to the east.

The area was redeveloped into the Civic Center in the early 20th century, with the construction of various city government buildings there.

[7] Just prior to the construction of the present courthouse, the site had contained the New York City Board of Health building.

Federal jurists advocated for their own courthouse, leading the United States Department of the Treasury to approve a second building in 1930.

[9] As early as 1930, the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White had drawn up designs for a federal courthouse at Centre and Pearl Streets, replacing the New York City Board of Health building.

[15][16] In July 1932, the federal government hired the George J. Atwell Foundation Corporation to excavate the site of the courthouse.

[18] The Treasury decided to build the courthouse out of granite, awarding a contract to James Stewart & Co. for $5.996 million on January 20, 1933.

Under the plan, the United States Courthouse would be the central structure of a new "civic center", surrounded by several public buildings.

[33] The government of New York City proposed redeveloping the Civic Center in 1962 as part of the "ABC plan".

[34] Several structures were to have been demolished to make way for a new Civic Center municipal building and a plaza, although the United States Courthouse would have remained in place.

[46] The United States Congress passed a bill in 2001, renaming the building in honor of Thurgood Marshall.

[28] To make way for additional mechanical systems, four elevators in the tower were truncated to the 17th floor, the highest story accessible by members of the public.

[5] On all elevations of the facade, the building is clad with off-white Minnesota granite, mottled with peach and gray colors.

The site slopes downward to the north; as a result, there are entrances to the building's basement from Pearl Street.

[20] Massive granite steps flanked by large pedestals lead up to the main entrance on Foley Square.

[22] On Centre Street, ten quadruple-height Corinthian columns form a colonnade, behind which is the main entrance portico.

[22] On the first sixteen stories above the base (consisting of the 7th through 22nd floors), each elevation is divided vertically into multiple bays, each with one window.

The bays are separated by triple-height engaged columns designed in the Ionic order, and there are two pilasters on each end of either elevation.

[52][53] The roof of the tower is pyramidal, pitched steeply, and made of terracotta clad in gold leaf.

[52] Under Gilbert's original plan, visitors would access these spaces in a specific order, passing through the portico, the lobby, and various hallways before reaching the courtrooms.

[56] This bronze detailing features an unusual combination of metaphorical images related to law and government, including dolphins, an erudite if somewhat obscure symbol of birth and democratic ideals.

Among the other motifs are grasshoppers apparently feeding on stalks of wheat, accompanied by the Greek word meta, meaning "to transform", which conveys the idea that change, even conflict, is essential to growth; there are also owls, representing wisdom, and acorns and oak leaves, signifying strength and endurance.

[22][56] Sixteen are original to the courthouse: five in the base and eleven in the tower, including the historic United States Court of Appeals courtroom.

[56] All have wood-paneled walls with colossal round arches and fluted Ionic pilasters; the Greek key molding seen in the main hall also frames the ceilings of the tower courtrooms.

[56] Within the tower, at the twenty-fifth floor, a double-height library features large ceiling beams supported by brackets painted with stenciled foliate designs.

[22][56] The library largely retains its original design, although a balcony has been added to increase the capacity of the stacks.

Modernist architecture proponent and sociologist Lewis Mumford called it "the supreme example of pretentiousness, mediocrity, bad design and fake grandeur.

"[4][5] Christopher Gray of The New York Times wrote: "The total composition, seen from Foley Square, is impressive but not inspirational.

Court administrator Steven Flanders told The Wall Street Journal in 1989: "The steps are where fantasy and reality seem to merge into a spectacle that the public can't resist.