Edited from a Wikipedia report:
The Suffolk County Courthouse, now formally the John Adams Courthouse, in Pemberton Square, in Boston. It houses the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Massachusetts Appeals Court. Built in 1893, it was the major work of Boston's first city architect, George Clough, and is one of the city's few surviving late 19th-Century monumental civic buildings.
“In a lesser chamber of Suffolk County Courthouse on a day in early August, 1965 – the hottest day of the year – a Boston judge slammed down his heavy gavel, and its pistol-like report threw the room into disarray. Within a few minutes, everyone had gone – judge, court reporters, blue-shirted police, and a Portuguese family dressed as if for a wedding to witness the trial of their son.’’
— From the short story “Palais de Justice,’’ by Mark Helprin (born 1947), American-Israeli writer
