March 9, 2010 - Courthouse Plaza

"Pillar Arc" by Ming Fay is a 28' high cast aluminum sculpture. The artist explained that it was inspired by a single kernel of a cedar cone and symbolizes the Northwest. It stands in the plaza of the United States Courthouse at 7th and Stewart in downtown Seattle.

The new courthouse broke ground in the summer of 2001, opened in 2004, cost $171 million to build and the 23 floors top out at 390 feet. The architecture firm NBBJ utilized a "redundant structural system" engineered by Seattle-based Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire to avoid collapse in the event of an explosion. Should such an event occur, an integrated cable system would support the perimeter of each floor.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Many consider this to be one of the best known sentences in the English language. Most of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence is inscribed on a wall in the plaza at the United States Courthouse in Seattle.

The rest of the preamble, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."