Talk:List of United States federal courthouses

Merger proposal / sources

Not all NRHP courthouses are federal courthouses (some are state courthouses). So not everything in that list can go here. bd2412 T 00:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Glad to see this started in mainspace. Please consider merging in material from the existing wikipedia-space Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Courthouses listed on the NRHP. It includes probably all NRHP-listed courthouses, of which many are Federal. From their names, it is not possible to establish which ones are. I think even some listed with County Courthouse in their name, at the date when they were NRHP-listed, may have become Federal courthouses later or were Federal courthouses earlier. Is there some source listing of Federal courthouses somewhere, to work from? I won't be able to help much here, anytime soon, but thought i should link in the NRHP list. Good luck with this list! doncram (talk) 00:38, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The courthouses on that list that start with "Federal" or "United States" should all be current or former federal courthouses (which is a good number of them). Note also that, of course, many modern federal courthouses will not be on the NRHP. bd2412 T 01:19, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, exceptions are occasionally made but usually only buildings >= 50 years old are NRHP-eligible. I like your switching to "Dates of use" as one column heading, i think that puts it well. There may be some which operated as Federal courthouses for more than one separated period, which can easily be conveyed by a <br/> and the 2nd date span on a separate line. Looking good! :) doncram (talk) 22:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and thank you for helping with this. It's a "monumental" task. :-) bd2412 T 23:25, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Sources:

• As BD2412 noted at my Talk: "...the Federal Judicial Center database of historic courthouses useful for getting those down. Everything there (including the pictures) is in the public domain, as a publication of the U.S. government. Cheers! bd2412 T 05:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)"
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States courts and judges/Courthouses listed on the NRHP has quick list of NRHP-listed courthouses. Note that is an imperfect list of the NRHP courthouses having wikipedia articles, as the quick list does not capture places which have other than National Register NRIS-based names (and notably lacks direct links to articles with (City, State) disambig added). doncram (talk) 18:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Piping the links to court names

I really think we should pipe the links to eliminate the parentheticals in the court names, for the following reasons. First, U.S. Post Office and Courthouse (Charleston, South Carolina) is not the official name of the structure; it is U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, and it happens to be the structure by that name located in Charleston, South Carolina, which is already reflected in the fact that it is listed under the header for South Carolina, and the location is listed as Charleston in the appropriate column. Therefore, there is no need to use the full article title to disambiguate the names of the structures, because that information is already provided. Also, using the full name unnecessarily stretches the first column out, making the appearance of the page strikingly uneven. bd2412 T 05:26, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean, and I agree that the "(City, State)" disambiguating phrase is not part of the name of the place, it is just to disambiguate. The parentheses, rather than using, say ", City" or ", City, State" should make it clear what is not part of the name. But, if there are multiple places in this list-article that have the same name, they need disambiguation here, just within this page! Perhaps within a Kentucky section, you need to show (City), to make it clear to a reader that each of the multiple rows, the links will really go to different articles.

This comes up sometimes in NRHP state or county list-articles, where there may be 2 or 3 places named "Smith House" or "Huey Long House". Sometimes it seems best to display (Street) while pipelink-hiding (Street, City, State). I'll demo in the KY section right now, showing display of (City) while pipelink-hiding (City, State). doncram (talk) 06:08, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

My point is that there is already a column for the city name; there is no point in saying "U.S. Court House (Paducah) [Image] Paducah". bd2412 T 15:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually there is currently also the street address intervening, as in "U.S. District Court House (Paducah)" [image] 501 Broadway, Paducah". But sure, there is enough different on the Paducah row from the other rows having the same link ostensibly to "U.S. Court House", that a reader would have the reaction: gee, these wikipedia people really ought to make separate articles about these places, there might be something different to say about each one, instead of just linking to one generic article about U.S. Courthouses....  :) Seriously, i think it is better to accurately suggest to the reader that the links will go to different places. Perhaps there is some other way to accomplish it, but showing (City) does accomplish that much. I won't revert or anything if u want to change it back for these, but I think that others would eventually come to the same conclusion. Perhaps you/we could ask one or two regular Featured List reviewers to advise? doncram (talk) 19:49, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I think we could solve that by adjusting the columns a bit - if we went courthouse, city, image, street address, etc. Also, I'm going to switch over to a shorter form for jurisdictions. bd2412 T 04:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Make former courthouses a separate article

This list is very useful but suffers from its relatively new status (creation date June 2009). Mixing current and past courthouses is a very bad ida. The former courthouse list could get quite long and muddies the impact of the current courthouse. I just added the Moynihan Courthouse which is the biggest in the system (the D'Amato courthouse which is second was just added in the past week). A list of Federal courthouse is usually available on all the indvidiual court pages. In the for what it's worth I just spotchecked Missouri western district http://www.mow.uscourts.gov/locations.html and see that this list is woefully off. I suspect there are similar problems for most states. I strongly encourage the former list to be broken out in a separate article. Americasroof (talk) 03:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

By my count, there are over 600 federal courthouses, past and present, listed in the Federal Judicial Center database alone. I think that ultimately, the best solution will be to divide the article by state, and on the page for each state to further differentiate between current and former. bd2412 T 04:33, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Thanks for your great work on this article and getting the ball rolling.Americasroof (talk) 08:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

600/50 = just 12 per state, ignoring that some are in territories and commonwealths like Puerto Rico. Some states would have very few. I would think dividing by big regions corresponding to Federal appellate court regions, first, would be better than beginning to divide by states, and I think the filesizes would be fine. Only for a few cases would it ever be necessary to split down to state level, i think. Yes, good about ball rolling though. doncram (talk) 13:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Federal courthouses by federal circuit? Sounds about right, actually. The 600 courthouses in the FJC database is not an exhaustive list, as it only contains old courthouses, so there are probably more like a thousand, which would make about ninety per page if divided by circuit. Within the page, they could be divided by state, and then by current/former status (although I do like keeping the new and old courthouses together, as it gives a sense of the succession from older to newer). bd2412 T 15:46, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Another alternative is to do page by state and then transclude them into pages by circuit, and into a page of the whole. bd2412 T 17:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

See List of United States federal courthouses in Alabama‎ as an example. It now transcludes into this page from a separate page. bd2412 T 18:21, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

And now, List of United States federal courthouses in the Eleventh Circuit. bd2412 T 05:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

More resources

• General Services Administration Regions - pages for individual regions contain state by state lists of GSA buildings, including courthouses
• U.S. Marshals Service, state-by-state lists of some courthouse locations
• GSA find a building search, several hundred federal buildings, some of which are described in thorough architectural and historical detail.

Cheers! bd2412 T 05:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Can someone add: under New York - US Courthouse, Place - Middletown, 25 South Street, SDNY, 2009-Present. I don't know how, Thanks.Applejet (talk) 12:52, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to switch columns for dates and "named for"

I've realized that the "named for" column is misplaced, as it sits between the jurisdiction column (which may be divided by date) and the dates themselves. I propose to switch these columns, so the dates are right next to the jurisdictions. bd2412 T 15:27, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. One thought: there is some discussion above about dividing presently used courthouses from former ones. I rather like having them in the same list so we can see the history, but I imagine many readers will be interested in finding only the ones in current use. Could we add a sortable active (Y/N) field? Jonathunder (talk) 17:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm leery of adding more fields, as the table already tends to bunch up on the right on my screen. I'm actually thinking of turning the notes at the end into footnotes, since they tend to be the most problematic. bd2412 T 17:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

To save some space, we could consistently abbreviate "United States" and use pipe links as needed. It is abbreviated U.S. in some instances currently, but in many others spelled out in full. Jonathunder (talk) 17:44, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The name of the article, should one exist (and eventually they all will) will have "United States" spelled out, which is why I've been spelling it out here. However, I have no objection to the abbreviation, as every article with the spelled out name will have a redirect coming in from the abbreviated form. Also, I've gone ahead and switched all the dates/named for columns. This makes sense also because every courthouse has dates of use, but not every one is named for someone. I'm going to go ahead and convert all the notes to footnotes, and eliminate that last column. It's utility is sporadic anyway. bd2412 T 20:42, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

File:U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, Laredo, TX Aug 03.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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? state = states Plano Texas, TX

Can someone with the skills set change state = states for the courthouse in Plano, TX?Srednuas Lenoroc (talk) 09:06, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Huon (talk) 11:01, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

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