James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse Historic Resources Technical Report

The James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse, also known as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, is a historic courthouse complex at 7th and Mission streets in San Francisco’s South of Market Area. Designed by James Knox Taylor and built between 1897 and 1905, the granite-clad, American Renaissance-style courthouse and former central post office is widely considered to be one of the finest public buildings in the GSA portfolio. The James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse is individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2023, Abide International, which has a term contract with the GSA, hired VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting to prepare a historic resources technical report (HRTR) describing and analyzing a courthouse “hardening” project that entailed attaching riot glass shields to 30 ground-floor windows along the two street façades and installing electronic door locks and new glass in three exterior doors.

VerPlanck assisted Abide and GSA’s staff architects to revise and fine tune the design. Upon completing the revisions, VerPlanck concluded that the project complied with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, facilitating approval of the project by federal authorities.