Restoration of Charlotte’s federal courthouse uncovers a long-hidden grandeur

While the cranes have returned to much of uptown, and the west side of Tryon Street is noisily being transformed, here at Mint and Trade streets, a significant resurrection of the federal courthouse is quietly taking place.

It is being led, inch by square inch, by a Charlotte-born judge and a ponytailed Dutch artist.

Presiding U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney gave the order to restore the first-floor ceiling in the lobby of the historic government building. Adrianus Van Der Staack is executing the plan.

The work was launched last year as part of the courthouse’s 100th anniversary celebration. Now, a third of the lobby ceiling has been returned to its original neoclassical grandeur. Van Der Staack has repaired the plaster ornaments and adorned them with their original pastel colors. New gold leaf has been added, and restored brass fixtures now gleam like fine butterscotch.

The contrast with Charlotte’s perpetual reincarnation on the surrounding blocks is striking. Whitney and Van Der Staak’s vision is a boomtown’s antithesis: Giving uptown’s oldest public building a clearer future by recapturing a portion of its stylish past.

“It is not Versailles,” Whitney says. “But we want the public to be in awe of this building. They need to be in awe because they are the jurors, the arbiters of our criminal justice system. They need to understand how important this building is, and how important their jobs are.”

In the year ahead, the 100-year-old structure is expected to share in a $1 billion congressional appropriation to improve eight of the country’s most-in-need federal courthouses. Once in hand, the money will underwrite infrastructure work and launch construction of an expansive annex overlooking BB&T Ballpark. Under a land swap deal, the city of Charlotte also will replace the roof.

By comparison, the ceiling work seems microscopic. Van Der Staack works alone, often within inches of the 20-foot-high ceiling. For months, he has been chipping away eight layers of the government-issue whitewash first applied as a cost-saving measure under the Carter administration. He repairs plaster as needed, then applies paint to match the original early 20th century color chart that was fished from the National Archives. He often takes fixtures with him at night to work on at his Randolph County home.

With a 35-year resume that includes restoration work at the Reagan White House, the Smithsonian and federal courthouses across the state, the 61-year-old artist says he could see where his labors were headed before he uncovered the first gold leaf.

Federal courthouses, he says, give dimension and weight to the pursuit of justice and the rule of law. That alone deserves gold, brass and marble.

He looks out over the lobby from the railing of his 17-foot-tall scaffolding.

“I know how this building is supposed to look,” he says in accented English. “This building really had class. This building was splendor.”

Where hope lives

The most compelling communities, says Charlotte historian Dan Morrill, display a clear sense of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

“The future is more important because that’s where hope lives,” he says. “But the past is the only place where we learn from ... It’s how we place ourselves.”

Bridging those two epochs in the same building can cause tension. On a recent morning, it plays out in the east lobby, where Whitney’s legal assistant, Ruth Blackmon, and a staff member of the General Services Administration debate the pace, cost and direction of the restoration work.

The GSA is responsible for maintenance issues in the building, such as the painting of the walls and the refinishing of the marble floors. With the possible exception of Van Der Staak, Blackmon is the most diligent guard dog of the restoration work. So far, some of the work crews that the GSA has brought in have not met her exacting standards.

Blackmon walks the GSA rep over to a section of Van Der Staak’s refinished ceiling, then points upward.

“This is art,” she says. “It’s going to be expensive. It just is. ... Bring in the wrong people (to do the other work), and it will be ruined.”

She sweeps her arm out toward West Trade Street to make a larger point.

“All the history in this city is gone,” she says.

Bakker and busing and mea culpas

Government buildings have been at Mint and West Trade since the 1830s. During the Civil War, the Confederate headquarters and hospital shared the same site.

The cornerstone of the current building was laid in 1916; 5,000 people turned out to watch on a Thursday afternoon. In a show of Charlotte’s trademark audacity, a major expansion to more than double the space was launched in the middle of the Depression.

The courthouse also housed the city’s main post office until the early 1980s. In adjoining offices, generations of residents took oaths to join the Armed Services or become American citizens. It’s where one judge ordered Charlotte to use busing to desegregate its schools, and another judge eliminated that plan a generation later. Jim Bakker was tried and convicted here. And over a matter of a few months, former Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon and former CIA Director David Petraeus pleaded guilty to crimes and apologized on the front steps.

At the time the courthouse was built, architects added design details to their plans based on how much money the building brought in. The Charlotte courthouse and post office was a top earner, so the designers piled on the architectural flourishes.

Van Der Staak uncovers or restores some of it every day. He began work in the spring. His pace and hours are his own. Because he can’t stand hotel beds, he drives back and forth to Seagrove each day. Given that he has his own security badge, he often works late into the night when the only other faces he sees look down from the portraits hanging on courtroom walls.

He relies on skills first honed as a teenage apprentice in the Netherlands. There, his on-the-job training often took place in the Gothic and baroque cathedrals of his homeland.

“He has such a passion for his work,” says Whitney. “He spends hours over a few inches of space. He’s not wasting money. He’s being so steadfast and tedious and accurate.”

Van Der Staak, who calls the judge “the Big Boss Man,” appreciates Whitney’s straightforwardness, which he says he once saw in Reagan.

As of now, most days include some kind of compromise. For example, Van Der Staak says the lobby is swimming with painted-over gold leaf that he can’t afford to replace.

A flash of gold

During an early stage of the project, a clerk of one of the federal judges noticed something strange under the old off-white paint above a nearby doorway in the east lobby.

Van Der Staak started chipping away. In short order, he uncovered a gold leaf-embossed state seal that is found in no other federal courthouse in North Carolina. It has two dates – when North Carolina signed the Declaration of Independence, and when Mecklenburg County signed its own.

Whitney says that discovery piqued courthouse curiosity of what might be hiding under the paint – and triggered a more ambitious set of plans. In the end, three more copies of the seal were found.

Van Der Staak estimates he needs another six months to finish. Whitney says the total costs might run up to $100,000, which will be covered by the fees lawyers pay to practice in the federal district.

Morrill, who is writing a book about the courthouse, says the price for all the work is dwarfed by the historic and intangible benefits to the city.

“When we think about the republic we live in,” he says, “the only thing that helps it endure is that people believe in it.”

This story was originally published January 5, 2016 at 6:40 PM with the headline "Restoration of Charlotte’s federal courthouse uncovers a long-hidden grandeur."