Downtown's Hall of Justice is one step closer to a total restoration. Closed since sustaining damage in the Northridge quake, the LA County supervisors approved a final environmental impact report that starts an eight-phase process to renovate the oldest surviving government building at the Civic Center. FEMA will partially fund the work, and the building will eventually be open for periodic public tours. Why would anyone want to tour the building, besides an appreciation of 1920's Beaux Arts architecture? Perhaps morbid curiosity - the building was not only the county courthouse but also housed jail cells and the city morgue. That means that it provided, um, temporary accomodations for Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, Marilyn Monroe's and Robert Kennedy's autopsies were performed there, and plenty of LA's entertainment community passed through those doors as well.
·Symbol of evil, justice endures [LA Daily News]
·Hall of Justice [LA Conservancy]
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