Architect of the Capitol in the context of United States Supreme Court building

The Library of Congress (LC or sometimes LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the de facto national library of the United States. It also administers copyright law through the United States Copyright Office, and it houses the Congressional Research Service.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. It is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill, adjacent to the United States Capitol, along with the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, and additional storage facilities at Fort George G. Meade and Cabin Branch in Hyattsville, Maryland. The library's functions are overseen by the librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the architect of the Capitol. The LC is one of the largest libraries in the world, containing approximately 173 million items and employing over 3,000 staff. Its collections are "universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages".

The Supreme Court Building houses the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. The building serves as the official workplace of the chief justice of the United States and the eight associate justices of the Supreme Court. It is located at 1 First Street in Northeast Washington, D.C. It is one block immediately east of the United States Capitol and north of the Library of Congress. The building is managed by the Architect of the Capitol. On May 4, 1987, the Supreme Court Building was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Designed in the neoclassical style, the proposal for a separate building for the Supreme Court was suggested in 1912 by President William Howard Taft, who became Chief Justice in 1921. In 1929, Taft successfully argued for the creation of the new building but did not live to see it built. Physical construction began in 1932 and was officially completed in 1935 under the guidance of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Taft's successor. The building was designed by architect Cass Gilbert, a friend of Taft.

The Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building (TMFJB) at the crossroads of the Capitol Hill and NoMA neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., houses offices that support the work of the United States Courts, including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the Federal Judicial Center, the United States Sentencing Commission, and the Office of the Clerk of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation.

The building was named after Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court; and is part of the United States Capitol Complex under the Architect of the Capitol's Supreme Court Building and Grounds jurisdiction which it shares in common with the United States Supreme Court Building that houses the Supreme Court of the United States.

The United States Capitol features a dome situated above its rotunda. The dome is 288 feet (88 m) in height and 96 feet (29 m) in diameter. Designed by Thomas U. Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol, it was constructed between 1855 and 1866 at a cost of $1,047,291 (equivalent to $17.6 million in 2024). The Statue of Freedom tops the lantern on the dome, and the dome is centered over the origin on street maps of Washington, D.C.

The dome is not stone, but rather cast iron carefully painted to appear to be made of the same stone as the capitol building below. It is actually two domes, one inside the other, and the total weight is 9.1 million pounds (4,100 t). The dome's cast iron frame was supplied and constructed by the iron foundry Janes, Fowler, Kirtland & Co. in the Bronx, New York. The interior of the dome includes a detailed geometric and floral pattern of lightly colored plasterwork, with Constantino Brumidi's monumental ceiling fresco, The Apotheosis of Washington, appearing in the oculus at the top of the inner dome.

The United States Capitol Complex is a group of twenty buildings, grounds, and facilities in Washington, D.C., that are used by the United States Congress, and federal courts. The buildings and grounds within the complex are managed and supervised by the Architect of the Capitol.

Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe (May 1, 1764 – September 3, 1820) was a British-American neoclassical architect who immigrated to the United States. He was one of the first formally trained, professional architects in the new United States, drawing on influences from his travels in Italy, as well as British and French Neoclassical architects such as Claude Nicolas Ledoux. In his thirties, he immigrated to the new United States and designed the United States Capitol, on "Capitol Hill" in Washington, D.C., as well as the Old Baltimore Cathedral or The Baltimore Basilica, (later renamed the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary). It is the first Cathedral constructed in the United States for any Christian denomination. Latrobe also designed the largest structure in America at the time, the "Merchants' Exchange" in Baltimore. With extensive balconied atriums through the wings and a large central rotunda under a low dome which dominated the city, it was completed in 1820 after five years of work and endured into the early twentieth century.

Latrobe immigrated to America from England in 1796, initially settling in Virginia where he worked on the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. Latrobe then moved to Philadelphia where he established his practice. In 1803, he was hired as Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States, and spent much of the next fourteen years working on projects in the new national capital of Washington, D.C., where he served as the second Architect of the Capitol. He also was responsible for the design of the White House porticos. Latrobe spent the later years of his life in New Orleans, Louisiana working on a waterworks project, and died there in 1820 from yellow fever.

Thomas Ustick Walter (September 4, 1804 – October 30, 1887) was an American architect. He worked on more than 400 projects, including Moyamensing Prison and Girard College in Philadelphia. He served as the fourth Architect of the Capitol, and led the addition of the north and south wings and the central dome. He retired in 1865, but financial difficulties forced him back to work in the 1870s, including a job as Chief Assistant to the Architect of Philadelphia City Hall.

A founder of the American Institute of Architects, he served as its president from 1876 to 1887.