Jefferson Market Library: The Castle of the Village
Why is it significant?
Look up at the red-brick gables, stained-glass traceries, and soaring clock tower of the Jefferson Market Library, looking like a misplaced Gothic fairy-tale castle.
Key Facts
| Place | Jefferson Market Library: The Castle of the Village |
|---|---|
| Address | 425 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10011 |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.73510, -73.99940 |
| Part of Walk | Greenwich Village: Bohemians, Beats & Speakeasies |
| Generated | Generated |
Look up at the red-brick gables, stained-glass traceries, and soaring clock tower of the Jefferson Market Library, looking like a misplaced Gothic fairy-tale castle. This Victorian masterpiece was designed in eighteen seventy-seven by architects Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux—the brilliant co-designer of Central Park. Withers incorporated Venice-inspired pointed arches, decorative stone carvings of birds and beasts, and a towering central belfry that originally served as a neighborhood fire watchtower.
Originally constructed as the Third Judicial District Courthouse, it was voted one of the ten most beautiful buildings in the country by American architects in the eighteen eighties. But behind its romantic Ruskinian Gothic arches lay a theater of scandalous criminal drama. The complex included a police court, a civil court, and an adjacent detention jail known as the Jefferson Market Prison.
In nineteen zero-six, this courtroom witnessed the sensational arraignment of eccentric millionaire Harry K. Thaw for shooting celebrated architect Stanford White atop Madison Square Garden in what the press dubbed the Trial of the Century. In April nineteen twenty-seven, another cultural firebrand stood before the judge right here: screen icon Mae West was convicted on obscenity charges for writing and starring in her provocative Broadway play titled Sex. West paid a five-hundred-dollar fine and spent eight days in jail, where she famously insisted on wearing silk undergarments while dining with the warden!
By nineteen forty-five, the city abandoned the courthouse. Pigeons infested the belfry, the clock stopped running, and by nineteen fifty-eight, officials slated the Victorian castle for demolition. But Greenwich Village bohemians refused to let their castle fall. Led by poet E. E. Cummings and activist Margot Gayle, residents rallied, petitioned city hall, and held bake sales to preserve the building. In nineteen sixty-seven, the historic courthouse reopened as a beloved branch of the New York Public Library, transforming a house of punishment into a sanctuary of learning.