The Prettyman Courthouse is located on Constitution Avenue in the Judiciary Square neighborhood of Washington, across from the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.

The Prettyman Courthouse is one of the last buildings constructed in the Judiciary Square and Municipal Center complex, an important civic enclave since the 1820s.

This placement accommodated driveways along the south and west facades, and along with the subsequent plazas and landscaping, provided a buffer between the colonnades of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse and the verdant Mall, onto which it opened before I.M Pei's 1970 addition to the National Gallery.

[3] With construction starting in 1949, the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse was the last addition to a neighborhood of important civic and municipal structures.

Known as the Municipal Center, this neighborhood's history of civic activity dates to the 1820 completion of George Hadfield's Old City Hall.

The building's H-plan was generally composed of an eight-floor rectangular block that intersected two perpendicular six-story wings on the east and west elevations.

These secondary pavilions projected forty feet beyond the main building envelope to the north and south, and provided 20-foot setbacks at the sixth floor.

A repetitive vertical fenestration pattern classically organized according to base, body, and attic, with recessed aluminum windows surmounted by Virginia serpentine spandrels, unified the main block with its flanking elements.

[3] Although the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse exterior showed strong classical influences in its fundamental geometric articulation, its facades also reveal interest in the modern aesthetic.

Chief Justice Harold M. Stephens' comment recounted a fundamental element of modernism: "We wanted the building to be functional, not monumental."

As a dual classical/modern expression, the building remains a period work, and evidences the federal government's search for new architectural identities in the wake of the Great Depression and the Second World War.

This style was promoted chiefly through the work of Paul Philippe Cret, who sat on numerous local, national, and international architectural juries, held a 34-year tenure at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a member of the tenets of European modernism, but married them with a traditional and classical design vocabulary.

Through its symmetrical mass, attenuated verticals and vaguely cubist sculptural element, the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse recalls the work of Cret, Wyeth, and U.S. Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Louis A. Simon.

[3] Aside from the separation of the District and Appeals Courts, a hierarchical and segregated plan was essential to ensure the security and privacy of all trial participants.

Moreover, three distinct circulation networks guaranteed that prisoners, judges, lawyers and jurors would interact only in the controlled environment of the courtroom.