Unlike its predecessor, located in Courthouse Place on 54 West Hubbard Street which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1993, the Cook County Criminal Courthouse is not a Chicago Landmark nor a National Landmark (City of Chicago)(Lightfoot). Yet despite the protections that are accorded by landmark statuses, the Cook County Criminal Courthouse has maintained its physical integrity for almost a century— a fact author Steve Borgia attributes “to the foresight of its designers,” (49). Recognizing the ill treatment of most public and civic buildings, Ralph Warner Hammett, the chief designer for the courthouse took “special concern” in selecting “good wearing materials, and floors, walls and trimmings that would not require expensive janitorial service,” (157).

B.B. King 07 Links to an external site. by Gorupdebesanez/CC BY-SA 3.0 Links to an external site.

Furthermore, while not receiving acclaim in the form of civic landmark recognition, the courthouse has been a recurring landmark in staples of American pop culture. According to Chicago's Classical Architecture: The Legacy of the White City, B.B. King recorded his Live in Cook County Jail album for inmates in the large jail adjacent to the courthouse in 1971 (Stone 113). While its remote location has been proven inaccessible to most of its patrons, viewers across the country could view the courthouse in their own homes during its appearances in TV shows “Hill Street Blues” and “The Good Wife,” (Meisner). Although the Neoclassical architecture has incited many filmmakers to shoot within its walls, one of the courthouse’s most acclaimed cameos was in The Fugitive, as the court in which Harrison Ford’s character was convicted of murder (Meisner).