Tweed Courthouse

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. 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. 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. The structure lies atop a low foundation made of granite. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Interior The interior of the Tweed Courthouse contains several opulent features, the most prominent of which is a central rotunda. The ceilings in many of the rooms are tall. Iron-balustraded balconies project into the rotunda from the second and third floors. The spaces to the west and east of the rotunda are symmetrical. The ground-floor plan has had several modifications, including the addition or removal of several staircases. The sculpture remained in the building after the exhibition had finished.--> Stairs and elevators Directly adjacent to the western and eastern sides of the rotunda, there are two cast iron staircases in open wells, connecting the first, second, and third floors. The staircases, designed as mirror images of each other, were each laid out so one wide stairway leads upward to a mezzanine which then splits into two smaller stairways to the rotunda of the floor above it. This meant patrons could touch the walls of the elevator shaft while the cab was in motion. In 1992, the elevators were retrofitted with plate glass walls and automated operation systems. At the time, these elevators were the last manually operated elevators in a New York City government building. Many rooms were accessed by wooden doors within cast-iron frames. The third floor serves as the top floor for the two main staircase halls from the rotunda. There are four more stairs leading to the fourth floor from the secondary halls. The attic contains a floor made of concrete and wood. A lattice truss and other structures supporting the roof, as well as the rotunda's skylight, are also located in the attic. ==History==

With the city's rapid rate of growth in the 1850s, several new structures were built or planned around City Hall, including a brownstone building built to the west of the Rotunda in 1852. A bill was passed in 1858 that provided for the construction of a new structure north of City Hall, in its rear. This would house several New York County courts, the grand and petit juries, and the county sheriff's office. Two commissioners were named for that task in November 1858. By early 1859, they had proposed a new budget of $1 million, saying the existing budget of $250,000 was insufficient. An amendment to the budget was declined, and the construction of the courthouse building was authorized by a resolution passed on May 3, 1859. A law called "An Act to Enable the Supervisors of the County of New York to Acquire and Take Land for the Building of a Court House in Said County" was passed on April 10 of the same year. Late in 1861, the land was appraised at $450,000 ().—was assisted by a ring of political allies, The author Albert Paine wrote that the collective's "methods were curiously simple and primitive", in that city controller Richard B. Connolly "had charge of the books, and declined to show them". The chief portion of this theft came from the extremely slow pace of construction on the new courthouse. The historian Alexander Callow later called the courthouse corruption "a classic in the annals of American graft". Construction started on the courthouse on September 16, 1861, Tweed bought a marble quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts, to provide much of the marble for the courthouse, in the process making a large profit for himself. Tweed was able to engage in many other acts of corruption, though not necessarily related to the courthouse's construction. Separate from Tweed's corruption was the slowdown of work on the courthouse due to the American Civil War. The reporter, who called the courthouse "bright and clean as a mirror", nevertheless expressed worry that the costs were rising and the schedule was being pushed back. In the first four years of construction, the supervisors were able to harvest $3 million from the project (equivalent to $ million in ) by taking 65 percent of the commission on each of the contracts. One particularly egregious example of these expenditures was a $350,000 bill for carpeting in the new courthouse; despite the high price of the contract, which would have paid for enough carpeting to cover the City Hall Park three times, some offices remained without carpets several years later. and a set of three tables and forty chairs set the city back $179,729.60. State Republican leader Roscoe Conkling alleged that more money was being spent on the New York County Courthouse's furnishings alone than on the entire United States Postal Service. After the Tweed Charter to reorganize the city's government was passed in 1870, four commissioners were appointed by mayor A. Oakey Hall, a Tweed loyalist, to oversee the completion of the New York County Courthouse. Having been appropriated $600,000 by the state legislature, the commissioners challenged all outstanding construction bills. They also moved to replace the proposed dome with a slate roof, which would use tiles from one of Tweed's quarries. Each commissioner received a 20 percent kickback from the bills for the supplies. Few media outlets, except for The New York Times and Thomas Nast, the cartoonist from ''Harper's Weekly'', pointed out Tweed's corruption. One article stated, "As G. S. Miller is the luckiest carpenter in the world, so Andrew J. Garvey is clearly the prince of plasterers", a reference to the fact that Miller had been paid more than $350,000 in one month. The ring was disbanded in 1871 upon the arrest of Boss Tweed. This, coupled with the death of John Kellum that August, halted construction for five years. The expenditure was more than four times that for London's Palace of Westminster and more than twice the value of the Alaska Purchase. Nonetheless, the New York County Courthouse soon was named after Tweed. Though Eidlitz's initial design for the southern wing was supposed to be similar to that of the main building, the real plans turned out to be much different. He redesigned Kellum's neoclassical interiors with rich polychrome effects in Romanesque Revival style, and added ornamental and architectural detailing (such as arches and foliate detail) to integrate the new wing's design with the rest of the courthouse. Eidlitz's design incorporated a polygonal skylight in the rotunda, a significant deviation from Kellum's original plans for a dome. The American Architect and Building News described how the addition was "grafted" onto the original building: "Of course no attention was paid to the design of the existing building and within and without a rank Romanesque runs cheek by jowl with the old Italian, one bald, the other florid; cream-colored brick and buff sandstone come in juxtaposition to white marble." The Tweed Courthouse was officially finished in 1881, more than 20 years after work began. Much of the construction was financed through the sale of public stocks issued on several occasions throughout the construction process. Stock with a combined value of $4.55 million was issued six times, and the last in 1871. The total cost of construction was estimated in 1914 at $11–12 million (equivalent to $– million in ). Of this, $8 million was a direct cost "on the books" and the remainder was adjusted claims and county liabilities. Court use, modifications, and decline 19th century In the years following its completion, the Tweed Courthouse was associated with the crimes of William Tweed, and many critics and newspapers viewed it negatively. For instance, reformer George C. Barrett said, "You look up at its ceilings and find gaudy decorations; you wonder which is the greatest, the vulgarity or the corruptness of the place." Such was the reputation of the courthouse that in 1871, a poem entitled "The House That Tweed Built" was published, describing the courthouse's corruption "in an amusing satirical tone". The following year, the guidebook ''Miller's New York As It Is'' described the courthouse in an unbiased perspective: The corruption associated with the Tweed Courthouse was so potent that, when space for municipal functions became scarce in the late 19th century, mayoral administrations were reluctant to destroy the building, even as they also proposed demolition for the much-admired City Hall. Early and mid-20th century The perception of the Tweed Courthouse as a symbol of wasteful spending persisted until the late 20th century, In 1938, mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia studied the feasibility of destroying the Tweed Courthouse after a suggestion from New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses. Under La Guardia's plan, the New York City Court, which occupied the Tweed Courthouse at the time, would move into the recently built New York County Courthouse, but the New York Supreme Court refused to cede any space within the newer courthouse. The Tweed Courthouse was seen as outdated by the 1950s, and the city government filed plans in 1955 to demolish the courthouse as part of the restoration of City Hall Park. It was not until the 1950s, when Henry Hope Reed Jr. wrote about the building, that writers started to argue in favor of the Tweed Courthouse for its historical significance. By 1908, Montgomery Schuyler had written that Eidlitz's original rotunda colors had "been shorn of much of it pristine force, which was much promoted by the tri-colored brickwork" following the addition of gray paint. Shortly afterward, in 1911 and 1913, elevators were added to the building, and steel-and-iron elevator machinery rooms were built atop the roof. The roof itself was replaced with an iron roof in the early 20th century. Subsequently, the space was occupied by the City Court, with nine justices' chambers being located inside the Tweed Courthouse. The original skylight was removed by World War II. 1942, These plans elicited criticism from the public, and Beame created a special task force that April to investigate the feasibility of preserving the courthouse. The task force's draft report, published in June 1974, recommended destroying the courthouse; this aligned with Beame's past comments that the courthouse should be "replaced with a more functional structure". The report stated that the projected $12 million cost of a brand-new structure was $5 million more than a basic renovation of the Tweed Courthouse and $1.2 million more than a full renovation. and from some politicians. The Tweed Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October 1974, which made the courthouse eligible for federal funds, but did not yet protect the structure from demolition. Following the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis, the city could no longer afford to demolish the courthouse, much less build a new structure. In 1978, the mayoral administration of Ed Koch commissioned another report, which found that the courthouse would need to be renovated at a cost of between $3 million for minimal repairs and $9 million for a complete restoration. The Tweed Courthouse was being used as municipal offices by the 1980s. the designations prevented "alteration, reconstruction, demolition, or new construction" without the commission's approval. By 1986, after some repairs had been completed, there were 250 to 300 people working in the courthouse. 1990s and early 2000s A long-term $6.3 million renovation began in 1990, with an expected completion date of 1994. At the time, the city was planning to restore the remainder of the Tweed Courthouse for $21 million. After workers discovered old skeletal remains under the courthouse, work on the elevators was temporarily halted while city officials investigated whether the bones were historically significant. Following the September 11 attacks, which occurred near the courthouse toward the completion of the restoration, the portion of City Hall Park around the building was closed due to security concerns. That section of the park reopened in 2007. The New York Daily News, investigating the causes behind the high cost of the renovation, found that much of the cost was due to the opulence of the original design. For instance, the facade cost $13 million to restore, and the reproduction of the skylights, masonry, and doors cost another $3.2 million. Officials sought to restore the initial design as much as possible by requesting materials from the original manufacturers, which further increased costs. Local newspaper Newsday wrote that the museum had "enjoyed favor in [...] Giuliani's administration" and that politicians who represented East Harlem, such as councilman Phil Reed, had opposed the move. Most of the building would contain the NYCDOE's offices in an open floor plan, but the ground floor would contain classrooms occupied by various schools. Under Bloomberg's plan, a cafeteria in the building's basement would serve both NYCDOE employees and students. NYCDOE employees had mixed views of the plan; some employees interviewed by The New York Times in March 2002 preferred to stay in their existing headquarters in Brooklyn, while others said they would rather move to the newly renovated courthouse. In June 2002, Bloomberg said he wanted school officials to move into the building by that fall, coinciding with the beginning of the next academic year. The city government spent $6.5 million on renovating the upper floors for the NYCDOE's use. By late 2002, the NYCDOE offices had been set up, but there were still discussions about whether to convert the ground floor for school use. The building continues to serve as the NYCDOE's headquarters . The ground floor was used as an "incubator" for new schools. The first of these was City Hall Academy in 2003, which gave two-week "residencies" to third- and seventh-grade students. City Hall Academy moved out of the space in 2006. It was then used by charter school Ross Global Academy, which moved out of the space by 2009. The Spruce Street School next used Tweed Courthouse's ground floor as a temporary location until it moved to nearby 8 Spruce Street at the end of the 2010–2011 school year. An elementary school, the Peck Slip School, moved into the space after Innovate moved out. The Peck Slip School used the ground floor for three years until it moved to a new location in 2015. , the NYCDOE operates the District 2 Pre-K Center at 52 Chambers Street within the building. As part of the "Halls of the City" program, in early 2026, the New York City government began renting out Tweed Courthouse and several other properties for events. The courthouse could accommodate events with up to 150 people seated or 300 standing. ==Landmark designations==

The Tweed Courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 under the name "Old New York County Courthouse". and it was added to the New York State Register of Historic Places on June 23, 1980. The LPC designated the building's exterior and interior as city landmarks in 1984. In its report about the Tweed Courthouse, the commission called the building "one of the city's grandest and most important civic monuments". The Tweed Courthouse is also within the African Burial Ground and the Commons Historic District, a city landmark district created in 1993. ==See also==