The largest building in Idaho to be completed with New Deal funds, the Ada County Courthouse was constructed in 1939 for approximately $350,000 under the Public Works Administration. The Art Deco courthouse was designed by the firms of Wayland and Fennell, and Tourtellotte and Hummel, and features Idaho’s largest collection of New Deal artwork – a series of murals depicting themes of justice and modernization executed by Ivan Bartlett. Efforts to demolish the National Register-listed courthouse in 2003 were defeated by a coalition of advocates led by Preservation Idaho.Until 2002, the courthouse served as the seat of Idaho’s Fourth Judicial District Court composed of nine judges. Appointed by Governor John V. Evans in 1983, Deborah Ann Bail was the first woman named to the district court bench in the state. Bail graduated from Northwestern School of Law in Portland, Oregon in 1974, was admitted to the Idaho Bar in 1975, and has served on the district court for 37 years.