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This is 99% invisible I'm Roman Mars

if you type the word courthouse into a Google image search, you get hundreds of results that look really similar to the US Supreme Court building. Big Steps, a granite Corinthian colonnade topped by a grand

pediment. If the architecture could talk, it would say respect me. Serious ass happens here.

That's Brett Myers, he's reporting this week's show. He went to the New York County Family Court in Lower Manhattan.

It's a building that looks nothing like the classic Roman and Greek inspired architecture that most of us associate with courthouses.

There's little to equate family with the building beyond dysfunction.

If the family court could have talked before its 2006 renovation, it would have said all who enter are doomed.

Built in 1975, this Polish black cubis hulk is about as welcoming as the death star.

That's Eugene Patron reading from an article he wrote about his time as a paralegal in the

building. He sums up the most common argument about the original design.

The New York County Family Court at 60 Lafayette Street is infamous in architecture circles as an example of form giving not a

damn about function.

And that's an easy argument to make.

Absolutely.

It filled me with rage the first time I saw this building back in the late 90s.

The design just seemed so wrong for a family courthouse.

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