Named to honor longtime Congressman, public servant and life-long South Boston resident, the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse is located on a magnificent waterfront site on Fan Pier and was designed by Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.  As the headquarters for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the building houses two Courtrooms for the Court of Appeals and 25 Courtrooms for the District Court.  There are also 40 judges chambers, a Circuit Law library, and offices for the United States Attorney, extensive support facilities for the United States Marshal Service as well as Pre-Trial and Probation services.  The 765,000 square foot building, clad in water-struck brick with granite trim, has ten floors above grade and one below.

The surrounding Harborpark, encompassing more than half of the 4.5-acre site, once housed important shipping and processing facilities and was designated by landscape architect Laurie D. Olin as open public space.  As its name suggests, the Harborpark celebrates the water’s edge and extends the city’s Harborwalk system to provide a broad pedestrian promenade, access to the floating dock and a sequence of landscaped spaces alive with trees and bushes indigenous to the New England Coastline.

In maximizing the benefit to the public of its prime waterfront location, the Courthouse incorporates an exceptionally broad array of services and amenities.  These include a café, information center, excursion boat service, as well as space for exhibitions, lectures, meetings and dining overlooking the Harborpark.  Public circulation galleries to the Courthouse assume a curve along the building’s edge overlooking a waterfront park and the Boston skyline.  The structure and its landscape combine spaces in which public participation is recognized, encouraged and enriched. 

 Three goals were the guiding philosophy into making this complex a reality:

        To give voice through architecture to those beliefs that underlines the American System of jurisprudence.     

     To make available to every citizen the extraordinary experience of this site at which the meeting of the city and the sea is most vividly dramatized. 
 

        To show how civic building and civic space can confer meaning and value on each other.