By the 1870s, San Francisco's federal courts and post office were scattered across rented downtown offices, a situation the government considered undignified for a city of such growing importance. Congress authorized construction in 1887, but the initial $350,000 allocation proved laughably insufficient. The sum climbed to $1.25 million, then to $2.5 million. The site chosen at Seventh and Mission Streets sat more than a mile from the business district, surrounded by working-class Irish and German immigrant neighborhoods. Many protested. The government built anyway. Supervising Architect James Knox Taylor drew on Italian Renaissance and Beaux Arts traditions, importing skilled artisans from Italy to execute the interiors. Then, on April 18, 1906, the earth moved. The courthouse and the 1874 U.S. Mint were the only buildings south of Market Street to survive the earthquake and the fires that followed. While San Francisco burned, the post office set up mail collection points around the ruined city. The building became a symbol of continuity in the weeks of chaos.

The exterior is clad in white Sierra granite, impressive but restrained compared to what waits inside. The grand first-floor hall features marble from four continents: Carrara and Yellow Siena from Italy, Salmon Pink from the Pacific Coast, Red Numidian from North Africa. Stained-glass domes ringed with mosaic tile eagles cap the rotundas at each end. On the third floor, the Great Hall presents Doric columns and a vaulted ceiling ribbed with gold-trimmed plaster. Beyond it lies Courtroom One, the building's masterpiece, where carved Composite capitals, cast-plaster cupids, fruit motifs, and stained-glass windows create an atmosphere somewhere between cathedral and opera house. When architect George Kelham enclosed the original interior courtyard in 1933 to add office space, he matched the original facades so carefully that only the terra cotta veneer on the upper stories betrays the addition. The courtyard itself had been no afterthought either, ornamented with geometric glazed brick in red, white, and blue, and one hundred pink-tongued lion heads lining the cornice.

The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 struck harder than 1906 in some ways, causing major structural damage that would cost $91 million to repair. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill led the restoration, installing base isolators beneath the building so it could ride out future tremors. The project added 45,000 square feet of space for a law library and offices in the former post office area, and restored the original ornamentation with painstaking fidelity. The building reopened on October 17, 1996, the seventh anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, a date chosen with deliberate symbolism. In 2005, during centennial celebrations, it was renamed for Judge James R. Browning, who had served as a Ninth Circuit judge since 1961. Seven years later, it was declared a National Historic Landmark, recognition that this courthouse ranks among the finest federal buildings ever constructed in America.

Walk the building today and you move between two distinct architectural periods without noticing the seam. The original Beaux Arts spaces overflow with marble, mosaic, and gilded plaster. But the two courtrooms added in Kelham's 1933 wing speak a different language entirely: sleek Moderne style, with labyrinth-patterned ceilings, cork walls, and gilded plaster eagles that trade classical excess for streamlined geometry. The contrast captures a shift not just in taste but in what Americans expected from their government buildings. The earlier rooms said power through opulence. The later ones said it through efficiency. Both still function as working courtrooms for the Ninth Circuit, the largest federal appellate court in the country, where judges decide cases beneath stained glass and Art Deco eagles alike.