Jefferson Market building
- Architects
- Calvert Vaux Frederick Clarke Withers
- Year
- 1877
- Style
- Gothic Revival
- City
- Manhattan, NY
The Jefferson Market building at Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street in Greenwich Village was built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse between 1874 and 1877, designed by Frederick Clarke Withers of the firm Vaux and Withers. Facing demolition in 1958, it was saved by public outcry and reopened as a branch of the New York Public Library, a reuse that preserved one of the city's most distinctive Gothic Revival landmarks.
the building
Courthouse turned library. Built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse, the building was threatened with demolition in 1958 before public pressure secured its conversion into the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library.
Clock tower and ornament. The AIA Guide to New York City described it as a 'mock Neuschwansteinian assemblage' of leaded glass, steeply sloping roofs, gables, pinnacles, Venetian Gothic embellishments, and an intricate tower and clock.
the style
Withers worked in the Gothic Revival style, piling up leaded glass, gables, pinnacles, and Venetian Gothic detailing around a clock tower to produce what the AIA Guide called one of the city's most remarkable buildings.
More on Gothic Revivalthe architect
Frederick Clarke Withers, of the firm of Vaux and Withers with Calvert Vaux, designed the courthouse in the 1870s. It remains one of the firm's most visible surviving works.
significance
The building is a National Historic Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977. It also sits within the Greenwich Village Historic District, created by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1969, and on the New York State Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Whitney Museum of American Art
- Stonewall Inn
- Church of the Ascension, Episcopal
- Forbes Building
- First Presbyterian Church
- Lenox Health Greenwich Village