It covers more than 1,400 square feet on the east wall of the building’s lobby, and it is made up of about 6,000 photographs that, taken together and viewed from a distance, form a picture of the 1916 courthouse building on Main Street.

“I thought it was great, to tie the two courthouses together,” said County Commissioner Ellen Reckhow.

The “Art Wall” uses about 270 repeated individual images: scenes, buildings and personal portraits pertaining to Durham history, particularly that of the judicial system.

Those images were fed into a computer and, using a program called AndreaMosaic, “it spat out an image for the Art Wall,” said Tim Hillhouse, an architect with the O’Brien/Atkins firm that designed the courthouse.

The program picked and arranged the individual images to form the overall image. The pictures were then applied to the backs of translucent panels and fixed to the wall, said County Engineer Glen Whistler.

The Art Wall includes judges, mayors, county commissioners, business leaders, judges and law-enforcement officials. Sheriff Mike Andrews is there, as is his predecessor Al Hight. Former mayors Chester Jenkins and Harry Rodenhizer are there, with19th-century U.S. Sen. Wiley Mangum, tobacco tycoon Julian Shakespeare Carr and N.C. Mutual Insurance co-founder John Merrick.

Two of the portraits could raise some eyebrows: former district attorneys Mike Nifong, who resigned in disgrace in 2008 over his handling of the Duke lacrosse case, and Tracey Cline, who was fired last year after a public feud with Chief Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson.

Hudson was on the committee that chose the photos.

“We knew that (Nifong’s and Cline’s presence) might be somewhat controversial, but, you know, it is the ultimate history of the courthouse,” he said.

“We can’t strike the bad, we live with it as part of our history.”

Whistler said the county is installing a touch-panel kiosk that will provide visitors with short narratives to explain “why that photograph is up there.”

The big picture is there on the wall, but a full view of it is obstructed by a stairway, but that is not entirely an accident, said Reckhow.

“Part of the reason for placing the mural was to make it pleasant to use the stairs,” she said.