The Tweed Courthouse (also known as the Old New York County Courthouse) is a historic courthouse building at 52 Chambers Street in the Civic Center of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. It was built in the Italianate style with Romanesque Revival interiors. William M. "Boss" Tweed—the corrupt leader of Tammany Hall, a political machine that controlled the New York state and city governments when the courthouse was built—oversaw the building's erection. The Tweed Courthouse served as a judicial building for New York County, a county of New York state coextensive with the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is the second-oldest city government building in the borough, after City Hall.
The structure comprises pavilions to the east and west of a central section, as well as a rear wing to the south. Architect John Kellum and political appointee Thomas Little designed the first portion of the building, which was constructed from 1861 to 1872. Construction was interrupted in 1871 when Kellum died and the corruption involved in the building's construction was exposed to the public. The project was completed by architect Leopold Eidlitz, who added the rear wing and finished the interior between 1877 and 1881.
The media criticized the project as wasteful and gaudy during the courthouse's construction, and for a century after its completion, there were frequent proposals to demolish the building. Several modifications were made after completion, including removal of its front steps. Modern restoration and historic preservation were completed in 2001. The building has since housed the New York City Department of Education's headquarters on its upper floors and schools on its ground level. The Tweed Courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, and its facade and interior are both New York City designated landmarks.
Site The Tweed Courthouse is in the Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., within the northern portion of City Hall Park and just north of New York City Hall. The plot is bounded by Chambers Street to the north, Centre Street to the east, and Broadway to the west. The structure measures , the longer side being located on the west–east axis. The portion of the park outside the courthouse building contains shaded walkways and lawns. Across Chambers Street, the Tweed Courthouse faces 280 Broadway, 49 Chambers, and the Surrogate's Courthouse from west to east. The Manhattan Municipal Building and the Brooklyn Bridge ramp are across Centre Street. Several buildings face the Tweed Courthouse on Broadway, including the Broadway–Chambers Building, Tower 270, the Rogers Peet Building, and the Home Life Building.
The Tweed Courthouse is the second-oldest municipal government building in Manhattan, after New York City Hall. During the 17th century, the site had been occupied by the city's public commons. The Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam used the location as a grazing site for animals. In 1686, the courthouse site was acquired by the English authorities as a punishment location for prisoners and an African burial ground. Eight graves from the American colonial era still exist beneath the courthouse. Other government buildings were also built, including an almshouse, the Upper Barracks, the New Gaol, a military jail called the Bridewell, and a second almshouse. The now-demolished Rotunda art gallery was directly to the east of the courthouse's site.
Architecture
The Tweed Courthouse includes a central section, two wings on the western and eastern ends, and an annex on its southern portion. It is four and a half stories tall. The floor count includes a half-story attic, but not the building's two mezzanine levels, which are considered to be intermediate staircase landings. The first floor is at ground level but was formerly known as the basement. The structure lies atop a low foundation made of granite. The roof was replaced three times: first with iron in the early 20th century, then with asphalt in 1978 or 1979, and finally with a stainless steel-over-rubber surface in 2001. The Guide to New York City Landmarks characterizes the building as containing "some of the finest mid-19th century interiors in New York".
John Kellum and Thomas Little were responsible for the courthouse's initial design. Kellum was hired for the Tweed Courthouse project in August 1861 and died exactly ten years later. While his obituary in Harper's Weekly praised him profusely, an anonymous writer for the American Architect and Building News said his involvement in the Tweed Courthouse negated the merits of anything else he had designed. Thomas Little, a political appointee of the New York City Board of Supervisors, was given ex officio credit by virtue of his membership on the Board of Supervisors. He submitted plans for the Tweed Courthouse in 1859; documents and testimony indicate that Little was likely the first architect of the courthouse. Leopold Eidlitz, who was hired to finish the courthouse in 1876, added the building's south wing and domed rotunda in a similar design to the New York State Capitol. The Romanesque style and his extensive use of brick and stone contrasted with Kellum's intricate cast-iron design. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) said Eidlitz's style departs from Kellum's classicism with "an American version of organic architecture expressed through medieval forms".
Main structure
The two original wings, designed by Kellum, were arranged in an shape. The wings measured wide along Chambers Street and deep. The entry portico on the main Chambers Street elevation of the facade rises three and a half stories from a low granite curb. Panels of granite, Tuckahoe marble, and Sheffield marble are anchored on the facade, with rusticated stone at the basement level. Behind the granite and marble cladding is the brick superstructure. According to an LPC report in 1984, no documentation regarding the use of other quarries was found.
Kellum's original published design for the main wing was in the style of a Renaissance palazzo, described as the "Anglo-Italianate" style, to reveal the influence of British Victorian architecture that was the foundation of the popular American Victorian style. The original design was inspired by that of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., which was being used for other sub-national government buildings at the time of the Tweed Courthouse's construction. The most prominent element from the Capitol used in the Tweed Courthouse was a large entry stairway that approached a triangular portico, supported by massive columns in the Corinthian order. The courthouse also contained a basement with rustication, pediments above the ground-floor windows, pilasters separating each vertical bay of windows, and a balustrade running along the roof. The courthouse's original design included an iron dome with a high tholobate, inspired by the United States Capitol dome. The dome, planned to rival the Kings County Courthouse in Brooklyn, was ultimately not built.
Facade
The main entrance of the Tweed Courthouse is located on Chambers Street, on the building's northern elevation. It is composed of a portico with four Corinthian columns, which covers a three-window-wide central bay. Large Italianate wooden doors are located on the second floor of the central bay, while the third floor contains three sash windows. The portico is approached by a reproduction of the building's original large granite stairway which was removed to accommodate a widening of that street in the mid-20th century,; ; but restored in 2002, when the portion of Chambers Street in front of the courthouse was narrowed.
On each side of the northern elevation, there is a flanking bay within the building's main section, as well as a wing that projects northward slightly. Each bay and each wing contains three windows, giving the northern elevation a total of fifteen window openings per story. Each of the windows on the northern elevation contains their original pilasters, centered colonnettes, and paneled blind railings, which are set within a marble surround. Each window opening contains a cornice above it and a window sill below it. When the building was constructed in the 1870s, there were striped awnings above each window, a detail that The New York Times derided. On the northern elevation, the windows of each wing are more elaborately decorated. The window openings on the second and third floors contain double-hung sash windows with sash bars made of wood. The ground-floor windows are simpler two-by-two windows with architrave trim. An entablature in the Corinthian style surrounds the top of the Tweed Courthouse's northern, western, and eastern elevations and remains mostly intact.
The western and eastern elevations contain mirror-image designs, with three bays each containing three window openings on each floor, for a total width of nine window openings per story on both elevations. The central bay on each side is topped by a simpler triangular pediment than that found on the northern side. The ground-floor wooden doors, set within the central opening on each elevation, are more simply detailed than the second-floor main entry portico. The southern elevation is similar to the northern elevation, except for its central wing, which was completed later.
Southern wing
Eidlitz designed the four-story southern wing of the courthouse in the Romanesque Revival style. The addition by Eidlitz extends southward toward City Hall. Kellum had designed a portico for the southern wing, similar to that on the northern entrance, but it was left out of Eidlitz's revised plan due to budgetary constraints. Eidlitz was not concerned about using a style that was different from the original design. He had been inspired partially by medieval cathedrals, which often took several centuries to build and, thus, used several styles.
The exterior of the southern wing measures three windows wide on the east–west axis and three windows deep on the north–south axis. The elevation is made of ashlar, of a similar color to the rest of the building. A doorway leads to a cellar on the wing's western elevation. The ground floor contains three arched windows on the western and eastern elevations, and two doorways on each side of the southern elevation. The second and fourth floors contain compound arched windows, while the third floor contains foliated banding. Pilasters separate the window openings on the third and fourth floors. There are also foliate belt courses that run horizontally along the facade.
Interior
The interior of the Tweed Courthouse contains several opulent features, the most prominent of which is a central rotunda. There are over one hundred rooms in the building. Many of the spaces contain cast-iron baseboards and elaborate steel lighting fixtures on the ceilings and walls. The ceilings in many of the rooms are tall.
Rotunda
The interior of the courthouse converges around an octagonal rotunda measuring across. The space is surrounded by a brick wall with arcades, cast-iron and stone trim, and a brick cornice. Iron-balustraded balconies project into the rotunda from the second and third floors. A skylight is at the roof of the rotunda. The original stained-glass skylight from Henry E. Sharpe Son & Co. was removed in the 1940s; a replica was installed in 2001.