By Jordan Gentile
Enquirer Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - When architect Tom Matheny strolls through the Ohio Departments Building in Columbus, he's reminded of a time when government structures were designed to make a statement.

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The building's walls are crowded with luminous bronze and nickel fixtures. Heroic murals adorn the ceilings. Dark veins twist and coil along vast marble surfaces.

Matheny is obsessed with such details. His employer, Schooley Caldwell Associates, is directing an $85 million renovation that will allow the Ohio Supreme Court to make this Depression-era landmark its new home. The court will move in Tuesday.

Restoring a building with so much visual flair is difficult, Matheny said. The craftsmanship of the 1930s is hard - and expensive - to duplicate.

"This place represents something we've lost," he said. "It was built during the most financially pressing times, yet look at what they accomplished. It speaks to the optimistic spirit of the people."

From its very beginning, the renovation had to introduce modern technology while preserving the building's historic authenticity.

One group of workers had to install central air and heating while another had to painstakingly restore many of the buildings' 61 murals to their original glory.

Project designers looking to fix and replace some of the building's marble interiors went back to 12 of the 13 quarries the original builders used in the 1930s. They also installed more than 100 miles of fiber-optic cable.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who calls the Departments Building "a treasure," first proposed the move in 1995 to lawmakers and Gov. George Voinovich. The court was sharing space with other state agencies.

Moyer said the move makes a statement about the importance of the judiciary. In 200 years, the court has never had a building of its own, let alone one whose architecture so prominently celebrates public service.

Ohio's eight presidents and eight U.S. Supreme Court justices are depicted in sculptures carved into a wall of the main lobby. Enormous murals depict the state's transition from a frontier region to a thriving industrial center.

And the scales of justice are chiseled into the wood paneling in the high court's future courtroom, even though the room was originally designed to be a government hearing room.

"With the exception of the U.S. Capitol, I haven't seen any other building with this much history," Moyer said.

The building was designed by Harry Hake, a prolific Cincinnati architect who also designed Crosley Field, the Queen City Club and Bell Telephone Headquarters.

Its $5 million construction, begun in 1930, survived construction workers' strikes, political squabbles over its cost and other setbacks. A gas explosion on March 14, 1932, killed 10 workers and injured 50 others.

Hake delivered a finished building a year later to rave reviews. Visitors still marvel at the building's streamlined style, which marries elements of the classical and art-deco traditions.

Barb Powers, head of the department of inventory at the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, said the building belongs to an era when public works projects were transforming the look of America's cities.

"Architects were trying to express the importance of the public realm," said Powers, who helped to get the building listed with the National Register of Historic Places. "People are still amazed at the richness of the story it tells."

Praise for the building hasn't been unanimous.

Back in 2001, Justice Paul E. Pfeiffer described the structure to the Columbus Dispatch "as insipid and uninteresting as a three-day insurance seminar."

He later changed his mind and now supports the project.

Other critics thought the estimated cost of $85 million was optimistic.

Lawmakers set aside the money in four bills passed from 1997 through this year. Construction began in 2001. After three years, the project has come in on-budget and slightly ahead of its end-of-March completion date.

"We haven't paid all the bills," said Paul Goggin, executive director of the Ohio Building Authority, which finances state construction projects. "But we know what all the bills are. That's pretty good."

There's still some work to do. An education center for tourists and school field trips is supposed to open in spring 2005.

Moyer and the project designers say the center is an extension of the history lesson the building already offers.

"It's a good reminder that we should care about the history of our state," he said.

By the numbers: Ohio's new Supreme Court building

Square feet: 415,580
Stories, including basement and attic: 18
Construction materials from Ohio: 78 percent
Different kinds of marble used in exterior: 15
Cost of restoration: $85 million
Cost of the original building (1933): $5 million
Construction time for both projects: 3 years
Length of fiber cable installed during renovation: 547,000 feet (more than 100 miles)
Books to be moved to a new law library: 400,000
Computers moving into the building: 300
Occupants moving to the building: 250
Visitors before restoration: 7,000 per year.
Estimated visitors in the first year after renovation: 70,000
Visitors expected to be schoolchildren: 85 percent.
Murals: 61
Ohio cities depicted in those murals: 15 (including Cincinnati)
Ohio politicians depicted in relief sculptures: 18
Native American leaders depicted: 4

Source: Ohio Supreme Court