In researching this week’s building, I thought of something an Austrian friend has said numerous times upon passing schools in Chicago: “they look like prisons.” Whether or not you agree with him, you must see the humor in the fact that the architect who designed the old Cook County Courthouse (aka, the Chicago Criminal Courts Building) was also in charge of designing some of Chicago’s public schools. Born in Berlin in 1830, Otto H. Matz came to Chicago in his early 20s to participate in the nascent stages of the city’s development, and his solid, massive buildings have certainly left their mark.

Today, Matz’s imposing structure at the corner of Dearborn and Hubbard, now known as “Courthouse Place,” is filled with law offices and other businesses. Finished in 1893, and designated a Chicago Landmark 100 years later, it is a strong surviving example of an architectural style that was popular in the late 1800s in Chicago: Richardsonian Romanesque. When we think “Romanesque” architecture, we think mainly of rounded arches; when we think of “Richardsonian Romanesque,” we think of arches, but also of heavy massing, rustication, engaged columns (i.e., columns embedded in a wall) sometimes capped with pointed turrets, and horizontal stretches of windows. (NB: Keep this emphasis on the horizontal lines of a building in mind when we later encounter the work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.) Indeed, when one looks at a Richardsonian Romanesque building, one is struck with a sense of its mass: it has a feeling of solidity and weight to it, much like a medieval fortress. How fitting for a building that is meant to instill a sense of the hand of justice coming down upon those who would dare defy the law!

And indeed, this courthouse saw countless trials in its 30+ years of operation. This is where the infamous Leopold & Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago law students, stood trial for the 1924 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Franks. Influenced by Nietzsche’s idea of the “Übermensch” — a human somehow above and beyond other humans — they sought to commit the “perfect murder,” figuring that with careful planning and their übermenschliche intelligence, they’d easily get away with it. Leopold had expressed to Loeb that “a superman … is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do.” Given the fact that they were both sentenced to lifetime in prison (though each, upon questioning, cowardly blamed the other for the murder), they were obviously just as subject to the law as the rest of us. An interesting parallel to much of today’s social rhetoric is Clarence Darrow’s plea to the court, attempting to shift the blame from these two privileged sociopaths to the social context these “young boys” were raised in. In what’s one of the most famous speeches of his career, Darrow blamed it all on education (darn Nietszche) and the war (darn World War I):

This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor ... Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? ... It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university. […]
I need not tell you how many upright, honorable young boys have come into this court charged with murder, some saved and some sent to their death, boys who fought in this war and learned to place a cheap value on human life. You know it and I know it. These boys were brought up in it. The tales of death were in their homes, their playgrounds, their schools; they were in the newspapers that they read; it was a part of the common frenzy – what was a life? It was nothing. It was the least sacred thing in existence and these boys were trained to this cruelty.

Sadly, though this building has seen true criminals like Leopold & Loeb brought to justice, it has also seen its share of miscarriages of justice: it was at this site — not in this building, but in the building that was torn down to make room for this one — that the defendants in the Haymarket trial were tried and (in the then-adjoining courtyard) executed. It’s fitting that we cover this building now, in honor of upcoming May 1st — “May Day.” The “Haymarket Martyrs,” as they are popularly known, were a handful of labor activists who were unfairly tried and found guilty of the murder of policemen at a workers’ rally at Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May of 1886. Despite a heavily biased jury composed of people from an already fearful and anti-immigrant public, and despite a lack of evidence against the defendants, four men — three of whom were German-born immigrants — met their death at the gallows in the jail behind the old courthouse. (A fifth man commit suicide in jail the night before he was to be hanged.) It is said that on their way to the gallows, these proud men wore white hooded robes and hummed the Marseillaise — a tune that is not only the French national anthem, but also the anthem of the international revolutionary movement. The Haymarket Affair, as it is known, is largely what led to the development and celebration of May Day — an internationally celebrated day honoring laborers and labor activism. Check out the photos below — you can see the bilingual flyer for the meeting where the infamous bombing happened, photos of the Haymarket Martyrs, and the beautiful memorial put on their grave, unveiled by the teenaged son of one of the martyrs. It features a strong, protective Lady Justice figure at once protecting the fallen, exhausted laborer while crowning him with the laurel of victory. (Photo credit for the beautiful memorial photo goes to Marble Orchard Cemetery Photography.)

What traces remain of this building’s famous (and infamous) history? Some claim that the building itself is haunted. Its legal history is indeed, in a small way, continued in the presence of law offices inside the building (among a variety of office types). However, I was moved to tears recently simply by walking behind the building to the quiet alley that runs through what used to be the site where executions were held. There is no memorial; there is nothing but another simple, brick wall at the back of a Chicago building. But if you visit this place, stand for a moment where the gallows were, and in the silence, imagine the last words shouted there by August Spies: “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”

If These Walls Could Talk: The Old Cook County Courthouse