Having secured what was for all intents and purposes total domination over Gotham City, Judge Solomon Wayne found himself at a bit of of a loss. Unlike some of his peers, Solomon was not the sort of person to seek wealth and power for it's own sake, but sought to USE the power and wealth he had acquired for a nobler purpose. The trick was finding such a purpose. Initially, the Judge threw himself into the cause of Abolitionism, going so far as to make the caves under Wayne Manor a stop along the Underground Railroad. He was joined in this endeavor by his younger brother Joshua, up until Joshua's death helping a runway slave elude a slave-catcher. Since the slave-hunter was acting in accordance with the law and Joshua was not, the most Judge Wayne could do about this was cover it up to protect his brother's reputation.
Needless to say, though Solomon continued to support the cause, it no longer gave him the same satisfaction, and he looked for something else. For a time he dabbled in an assortment of various noble causes, to the great irritation of his fellow Gotham aristocrats, who of course found themselves obliged to support whatever cause the Judge was into at any given time, or face the consequences. For example, when Burgess Cobblepot balked at supporting the construction of a Catholic church in the Cauldron, a neighborhood that had become home to a great many Irish immigrants, Judge Wayne delivered a public dressing down so blistering that it became legendary, and is considered by many to have been a chief cause of the elderly Cobblepot paterfamilias choosing to retire from public life and turn over control of family affairs to his son Henry.
This rather harrowing period came to an end in 1840, when a young architect named Cyrus Pinkney appeared before Judge Wayne as the victim of an assault. On numerous occasions victors in Solomon's court had attempted to show their gratitude in tangible fashion, for which he'd had to penalize them. And so, as had become his custom, after finding in Cyrus' favor, he took the other man aside and informed him in the strictest terms that no gratitude was necessary before he had the chance to incriminate himself. Unlike many so informed, Cyrus accepted this warning with good grace, and what what was usually a rather terse exchange of a few sentences became a long conversation.
Like the Judge, Cyrus was a deeply religious man, and sought to use his his talents and skills to forward the cause of righteousness. He believed that the city could be viewed as a single living organism, and that it could be compelled to fight it's own evil through calculated use of architecture. Solomon was deeply impressed by Cyrus' philosophy and by his portfolio of architectural designs. So, impressed, that he commissioned Cyrus to, essentially, rebuild the entire city.
At first, the project went well, though some people found Cyrus' neo-Gothic, gargoyle-encrusted buildings ugly and/or frightening. Among these was Henry Cobblepot, who strongly but futilely resisted having his family's holdings remodeled in this fashion. The resultant conflict between Judge Wayne's protege and the Cobblepot scion quickly turned nasty, with Cyrus convinced that Henry was planning to poison him and after a failed attempt to kill him first, faking his own death and disappearing. Solomon was greatly disheartened by these events. The deaths of several of his sons and cousins in the Civil War proved too much even for his astoundingly stout heart, and he made the decision to retire from public life.
His sole surviving son Alan, found he had big shoes to fill. Unfortunately, this proved to be the least of his problems...
