Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photo: Francisco Collazo
**

Municipal buildings are like cemeteries, I think: We tend to avoid them unless we have some inescapable business there.

I don’t know why this is, though; as with cemeteries, the buildings where formal business is conducted tend to harbor ambitious elements of art and design that are rarely in evidence–at least not in quite the same way–in our more quotidian spaces.

Last night, we attended a talk sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council as part of its “Access Restricted” series of “nomadic lectures” about the law. The setting was the New York County Supreme Court, a grand, landmarked building whose entryway leads into a rotunda painted with a mural depicting seminal figures and moments in legal history.

Rotundas… you’ve probably never seen a travel article about them, but this is at least the second one I’ve seen (the first being the rotunda of the Capitol building in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a gorgeous mosaic also depicting an epic sweep of history) that has caught my attention and held it, almost distracting me from whatever I was supposed to be doing. There’s so much happening in this mural; I could look at this tiny detail of the scene unfolding beneath Lincoln’s leg for at least a day:

There’s no drum roll and take-away here. Just this: don’t overlook the obvious in your search to find something extraordinary.

More photos of the Court are here.