Jefferson Market Courthouse
| Jefferson Market Courthouse (Third Judicial District Courthouse) |
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
| National Historic Landmark | |||
 The intersection of 6th Avenue - West 10th St., view of the building's clock tower |
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| location | Greenwich Village , New York City , New York , United States | ||
| Coordinates | 40 ° 44 '4 " N , 73 ° 59' 57" W | ||
| Built | 1874-1877 | ||
| architect | Frederick C. Withers | ||
| Architectural style | Neo-Gothic | ||
| NRHP number | 72000875 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | November 9, 1972 | ||
| Declared as an NHL | 22nd December 1977 | ||
The Jefferson Market Courthouse (also: Jefferson Market Library , nickname: Old Jeff ) was originally a courthouse and has been a branch of the New York Public Library since 1967 . It was designed by Frederick Clark Withers from 1874 to 1877 and is located in the New York borough of Greenwich Village on Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) on the former property of the eponymous Jefferson Market ; The owner is the City of New York. The 52 m high clock tower, which originally also served as a fire watch , is striking . The building has been on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) since November 1972 under the name Third Judicial District Courthouse . In December 1977, it was granted National Historic Landmark status .
history
The Jefferson Market Courthouse was designed by Frederick Clark Withers of the Withers & Vaux architectural firm and is considered Withers' most famous work. Withers was born in England and completed his architectural training there; In 1853 he emigrated to the United States and joined the Withers & Vaux office, where he had already been involved in the plans for Central Park in New York before receiving the contract to build the new Jefferson Market. His first designs were based very much on the competition entry of the British architect William Burges for the Royal Courts of Justice ( Royal Courts of Justice ) in London. Although Withers changed its design, discussions about this similarity continued after the Jefferson Market Courthouse was completed.
It was built on a triangular lot that lies between Avenue of the Americas and West 10th Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood. It is named after Jefferson Market , which existed on this property until 1873 and which had a wooden fire watchtower. In 1873 it was decided to rebuild the vacated land with brick buildings ; In addition to the Jefferson Market Courthouse , a fire station, a prison and a new market building were also part of this new development, the construction of which cost around 360,000 US dollars - this amount did not include the architect's fee. In an architect survey around 1880, the building was voted one of the ten most beautiful buildings in the USA.
The building was the seat of the "Second district police courts" (comparable to the German district court ) on the ground floor and the "Third district civil courts" (district civil court) on the first floor. Due to the courthouse's proximity to the theater district, where many arrests took place, the court soon became so congested that it became the first court in the United States to establish a night court in 1907. From 1929 only negotiations against women were conducted, at the same time the other buildings in the complex were demolished and replaced by a 10-story women's prison. After a reorganization of the district courts in 1945, the Jefferson Market Courthouse stood empty from 1946, before briefly housing the office of the US Census Bureau and then a police academy.
Since the division of the building proved unsuitable for government facilities, it was to be auctioned in 1959. There were massive popular protests against this sale, which eventually led to the Jefferson Market Courthouse becoming a branch of the New York Public Library. The preservation of the courthouse also met with criticism from the population of Greenwich Village: the zeitgeist of the 1950s was more for new buildings than for the preservation of old buildings; there were as yet no laws for monument protection. The initiative to preserve the former courthouse was led by Margot Gayle , activist and monument protector. With the support of the then Mayor of New York, Robert F. Wagner , funds amounting to USD 729,000 were made available until 1963. After extensive renovation work, for which Giorgio Cavaglieri, an active in the monument protection architect, was responsible, the Jefferson Market Library opened on November 27, 1967. Residents of Greenwich Village campaigned for the demolition of the women's prison, which was implemented in 1973; the vacated area was converted into a public park.
Known court hearings
In 1906, pre- trial detention was ordered in Jefferson Market Courthouse for Harry K. Thaw , who had shot and killed the architect Stanford White , the lover of his wife Evelyn Nesbit , in a restaurant in (old) Madison Square Garden . After two trials, Thaw was admitted to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Beacon as insane . Evelyn Nesbit had testified as a witness for her husband in the second hearing and said, among other things, that she should have posed for White in a red velvet swing at the age of 15. The case caused quite a stir and was filmed in 1955 as Das Mädchen in der Samtschaukel (Original title: The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing ) with Joan Collins in the lead role.
The striking women of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory , a clothing factory that mainly employed young women from immigrant families, were tried in the night court of the Jefferson Market Courthouse. The women went on strike because of the low wages, long hours and harsh working conditions in the factory. The factory owners hired thugs to attack the picket lines, and in the course of the clashes, which also included police interventions, the women were arrested and brought before the night court. The employers hoped that this would intimidate the women and end the strike, as prostitutes usually appeared in court at night. The workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were not impressed by this, however, continued their strike and also made some improvements. The working conditions did not change sufficiently: on March 25, 1911 146 people died in a fire ; they were unable to escape from the burning building because the doors were locked during working hours.
description
Outside
Withers also took the triangle as the shape of the property into account in the floor plan of the court wing, as this part of the development consists of two buildings that are arranged in a triangle, with the larger parallel to 6th Avenue and the smaller parallel to West 10th Street. The connection between the two buildings is formed by the clock and bell tower, which was placed as the apex of this triangle at the corner of the intersection of the two streets. They are also connected inside by a staircase in the tower.
The Jefferson Market Courthouse is a one-and-a-half-story brick building with a full basement, the facade of which is horizontally structured by yellow sandstone bands. The red brick surface, which is laid in the Flemish Association , is decorated with ornaments made of black bricks . White granite was placed in front of the building plinth on the sides facing a street .
The Jefferson Market Courthouse was built in the Gothic Revival style. Withers had already built several churches in the Victorian Gothic style and based himself on models in Venice and northern Italy. Gradually he began to apply this style to secular buildings . The Jefferson Market Courthouse shows features of the architectural style, for example in the detailed stone carvings on the facade, pointed arch windows, the tracery as well as several corner towers, gargoyles and pinnacles .
The roof of the building, which has a large number of dormers , was originally covered with slate , which has now been replaced by a gray sheet metal covering. The windows are mostly single-winged, the window sills are made of granite. There are also a number of pointed arched windows, some with stained glass.
The main portal of the building consists of a pointed arch into which a modern entrance door has been placed. A circle with the original name “Third Judicial District Court House” was placed in the arch above the door. In a tympanum above the windows above the portal zone there is a relief of the court scene from Shakespeare's play " The Merchant of Venice ".
Clock tower
The 52 meter high clock and bell tower is polygonal up to the first floor and is then continued up to the square clock top with four dials; a pyramid roof forms the end . It is richly decorated: the facade is divided horizontally by granite bands and black brick friezes . There are five tracery windows on the first floor, which are stained glass and crowned with small gables . The transition from the round shaft to the square clock attachment was optically implemented by means of a step on each console ; Gargoyles adorn the 4 corners of the attachment.
At a height of about 30 meters there is a circumferential platform on which a security guard originally looked out for fires in the area and in the event of a fire alerted the fire brigade and residents with a bell, he could either use a rope or a rope to raise the bell Ring the hammer. The platform and bell chamber can be reached via a separate staircase, the entrance of which is on West 10th St. The fire bell, which weighs around 5,400 kilograms, was cast in 1863 by Jones and Company of Troy, New York . It is 6 feet (1.83 meters) high and 7 feet (2.13 meters) in diameter; In the late 1990s, their value was estimated at around $ 250,000. On the inside there is an inscription relating to the Spanish-American War : “ To Hell with Spain, Remember the Pain. JD Rose, Aug. 10, 1898 ” (German roughly:“ To hell with Spain, remember the torment. ”). With the spread of Morse code in the late 19th century, there were more efficient ways to raise the alarm quickly and the bell was no longer used. From 1995, local residents campaigned to restore the bell. The Elderhorst Bells company from Pennsylvania first exchanged the bolt that connects the bell to the tower and equipped it with an electromagnetic clapper that is controlled by a laptop.
At the foot of the bell tower there is an ornamental fountain that has now dried up. A medallion shows a pelican as a life-giving symbol. In the ornamental gable that crowns the fountain, there is a relief that shows " the weary traveler" .
Inside
Material and style are continued in the interior of the Jefferson Market Courthouse: sandstone and bricks with intricate ornaments were used for the walls. Doors and frames , some of which are crowned with decorative wooden gables, were painted black, the pointed arched windows and windows of the bell tower were painted with glass .
In addition to the staircase leading to the tower's observation deck, the building has two further staircases. The entrance hall leads to the northern staircase in the bell tower. At the southern end of the building there is a second staircase, the concrete staircase of which has a black iron railing. An elevator was also installed.
The entrance hall is laid out with a terrazzo floor in which copper strips form a diamond pattern. Tiles were laid in the other corridors and parquet flooring in the reading rooms . A black steel spiral staircase leads from the ground floor to the basement, where prisoners used to wait for their trial. The so-called reference room of the library is located in the basement and is crossed by brick walls, which are interrupted by arches .
The architect Cavaglieri spent four years preparing to renovate and convert the Jefferson Market Courthouse into a library. He received the building largely with regard to the interior fittings and had the windows replaced according to their original model, for example. He added new equipment such as air conditioning, elevator and library equipment in a modern design. Its biggest change from the previous courthouse was the installation of a catwalk , which connects the northern and southern parts of the building through the reading room on the first floor. The corridor is not open to the public, but connects staff rooms with one another.
Web links
- About the Jefferson Market Library. On the New York Public Library website
- Website on the occasion of the library's 50th anniversary with additional pictures. The photos show, among other things, images of the citizens' protests, the opening and the renovation work before the opening.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c About Jefferson Market Library on the New York Public Library website, accessed September 23, 2019
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: New York. National Park Service , accessed November 7, 2019.
- ^ A b c d Third Judicial District Courthouse (Jefferson Market Courthouse) on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), accessed September 5, 2019.
- ^ A b Margot Gayle : Jefferson Market Courthouse. In: The Encyclopedia of New York City. Kenneth Jackson, Lisa Keller, Nancy Flood (Eds.), Yale University Press, London (USA) 2010, ISBN 978-0-300-18257-6 , p. 675, (accessed online from de Gruyter ).
- ↑ Michelle Nevius, James Nevius: Victorian Splendor: Jefferson Market Courthouse. In: Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. Free Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-8997-6 , p. 135
- ^ Christopher Gray: The Courthouse That Escaped the Gavel. New York Times Online October 31, 2014.
- ↑ Girl in Red Velvet Swing Longed to Flee Her Past . Los Angeles Times, December 11, 2005, accessed September 29, 2019.
- ↑ Old Bell Regains Its Voice And a Community Resounds . In: The New York Times, April 11, 1997, Section C, page 1.
- ^ Obituary for Giorgio Cavaglieri. From: nytimes.com on May 18, 2007, accessed October 14, 2019.