The Jefferson Market Branch, New York Public Library, once known as the Jefferson Market Courthouse, is located at 425 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), on the southwest corner of West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, on a triangular plot formed by Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street. It was originally built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse from 1874 to 1877, and was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers of the firm of Vaux and Withers.
The building got substantial use as a courthouse, as the Third Judicial District covered the Madison Square area, where the city’s entertainment district – The Tenderloin – was located. So heavy was the traffic, that the country’s first night court began there. Among the more noted people arraigned in the courthouse was Harry K. Thaw, the murderer of celebrity architect Stanford White.
The building ceased to be used as a courthouse in 1945; its future was uncertain, and it was in danger of being torn down. A group of community preservationists led by Margot Gayle and including E. E. Cummings and Lewis Mumford formed the Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started and campaigned to have the building converted into a library. In 1961, the New York Public Library agreed to the plan and architect Giorgio Cavaglieri was brought in to restore the exterior and redesign the building’s interior for its new use – one of the first adaptive reuse projects in the United States, and a signal event in the historic preservation movement. The restoration is estimated to have cost $1.4 million. The library opened in 1967, with the police court became the Children’s Reading Room, the Civil Court the Adult Reading Room. Budget cutbacks in 1974 caused the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library to vote to close the branch, as well as two others. After an outcry from residents, the decision was rescinded one month later.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977, both under the name “Third Judicial District Courthouse”.
edited from Wikipedia
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