Where Have You Gone, Perry Mason?

I spent yesterday serving on a jury in C.F. Murphy Associates' modernist classic, the Richard J. Daley Center (1965). Few buildings experience more wear and tear than a county courthouse, but the building had clearly been properly maintained and still looked as impressive and dignified as any neo-classical civic building. The built-in minimalist wall clocks still worked, the courtrooms maintained their crisp formality, and the exterior had weathered into a rich cinnamon brown. The serene minimalism of Murphy's design seemed to temper the hustle and bustle of the marketplace of justice atmosphere of the corridors, where attorneys and their scruffy clients worked out plea bargains. The courts seemed calmer than the Second Empire squalor of Philadelphia's City Hall, where I had once served on a jury.

Evidently, however, architecture's power to influence human activities has its limits. The rationality of Murphy's design didn't penetrate into the jury deliberation room in which I was locked until late last night. After hours of rancorous debate, we emerged a hung jury on a simple DUI case. I won't bore you with the details, but I swear if the defense attorney had claimed the police were being unreasonable by subjecting his client to a field sobriety test when he was too drunk to take it, some people would have bought that argument.