"Audre Lorde, too, points to the House of Detention as the epicenter of 1960s Greenwich Village. 'Information and endearments flew up and down, the conversants apparently oblivious to the ears of the passersby as they discussed the availability of lawyers, the length of stay, family, conditions, and the undying quality of true love. The Women's House of Detention, right smack in the middle of the Village, always felt like one up for our side — a defiant pocket of female resistance, ever-present as a reminder of possibility, as well as punishment.' …The House of D was an 11-story art deco stone structure that towered over Village rooftops. Billed when it opened in 1932 as a 'school for citizenship' with hospital wards, vocational training, and sinks, toilets, and windows in the cells, claims to its reform mission had faded by the 1960s… Inside the House of D lesbians stood their ground as boldly as they did outside. Confined in the 'skyscraper prison,' inmates and their visitors dominated the streets with their voices, their gestures, and their shouted intimacies. Stolen privacy led to the public, flaunted queerness that required bold defense in a hostile territory outside. Confinement did not contain lesbian ferocity." Continue reading this excerpt from the Gotham Center for New York City History's roundtable on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Jefferson Market Library ca. 1938 The fanciful clock tower of the Jefferson Market Court, the tallest of Greenwich Village’s 19th-century buildings, was a local landmark that appeared in many of Abbott’s Village views. In 1877, Calvert Vaux and Frederic C. Withers designed this Ruskinian Gothic courthouse and jail to replace an old open market and wooden fire tower. In 1931, the jail was torn down for an eleven-story women’s house of detention, which in turn was torn down in 1974 and replaced by a community garden. Abbott photographed the front of the courthouse in 1935, revealing the full exuberance of the Vaux-Withers design. In 1938, she rephotographed the courthouse, this time standing on Sixth Avenue and using a hand-held camera. Vacated by the courts in 1945, the courthouse was saved from demolition in 1967 and renovated as a branch of the New York Public Library.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Landmarks Law, which for the first time allowed buildings, neighborhoods, and sites to be preserved through landmark designation in New York City. Designated on April 29, 1969, the Greenwich Village Historic District is one of our city's oldest and largest historic districts. At over 2,200 buildings and 100 blocks, it covers much (but not all) of Greenwich Village between University Place and Washington Street, 13th Street and West 4th Street/St. Luke's Place. Its continuing preservation and oversight remains at the core of Village Preservation's mission, along with that of the 15 other historic districts, over 100 individual landmarks, and eight interior landmarks designated in our neighborhoods since — you can view an interactive timeline of all of these designations here. The Greenwich Village Historic District is undeniably charming — so much so that it’s virtually impossible to come up with a top-10 list of its most alluring architectural gems. But with no insult to sites not included, here is one run at 10 of the most charming sites you’ll find in this extraordinarily quaint historic quarter.

These images are taken from Certificate of Appropriateness applications to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) for sites located within the area covered by Village Preservation – Greenwich Village, the East Village, NoHo, the Meatpacking District, and the South Village – since late 2009, when Village Preservation began maintaining these applications on our website. These are applications for changes to landmarked properties which are substantial enough that they require review by the full Landmarks Preservation Commission and a full public hearing. Often times these applications include historic photos of the building or even surrounding buildings as part of the documentation and argument supporting the proposed application for changes. Regardless of the applications (which can also be viewed in each case – just click on the link to see along with the outcome), these images are invaluable visual documents of the history of these buildings. Explore more images like this here.

The Jefferson Market Library, constructed in 1874-77, was “one of the ten most beautiful buildings in America,” according to a poll of architects conducted in 1885. The Ruskinian Gothic structure, originally a courthouse, is considered one of the finest examples of High Victorian architecture in America.

"Built between 1874 and 1877 as the Third Judicial District Courthouse, the Jefferson Market Courthouse, located on Sixth Avenue between Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street, remains a Greenwich Village landmark, albeit serving a very different function. Designed in the American High Victorian Gothic style by the firm Vaux & Withers, it was built to house the Police Court and the District Court. In 1906, Henry Thaw was indicted in this courthouse for the murder of architect Stanford White, whom Thaw suspected of dallying with his wife, the former actress Evelyn Nesbit. Reflecting its judicial function, the building’s sculptural detail includes the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice. The Sixth Avenue El rumbled past the courthouse from 1878 to 1939. By 1958, the building had not been used as a courthouse for over 10 years, and the City was planning to sell the entire block to private developers. Before the enactment of New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Law, a grassroots preservation group succeeded in eliciting the support of then Mayor Robert Wagner, who prevailed on the New York Public Library to acquire the building for a branch library, which it remains to this day." For more on Jefferson Market Library and NYC's other 'lost' courthouses, check out this article by Robert Pigott in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

Women's House of Detention, February 1939. Constructed in 1931 as the Women's House of Detention, the 11-story subtle Frech Art Deco building replaced the Jefferson Market, a jail, and a firehouse. The chapel in the prison included a turntable altar with wedges set up for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish services. Never a popular building in the neighborhood, it was closed in 1971 and in 1973 then Mayor Lindsay ceremonially took a hammer to the building. Despite this early act of demolition, a local group fought, unsuccessfully, to retain the building for senior housing. The building was eventually demolished and replaced with the Jefferson Market Garden, a project supported by a group of local garden advocates, grant funding, and water from the Parks Department.

Every year millions of tourists make their way to New York City. While many of them may bypass the Village to flock to Times Square or the Statue of Liberty for a photo, there are many spots here that have gained popularity as a top spot to Instagram. Many of the popular spots draw tourists with their pleasing aesthetics. But often these traveling shutterbugs know little about the vast amount of history behind the sites. So for our many visitors, today we provide some history of some of the spots they use as a backdrop for their social media feeds.

Jefferson Market Courthouse, ca. 1975. The Third Judicial District Courthouse was erected between 1874-1877 on a site adjacent to Jefferson Market. The building, which came to be known as the Jefferson Market Courthouse, was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers, the partner of Calvert Vaux. Withers’s ambitious design incorporated High Victorian and Ruskinian Gothic elements, including a 100-foot clock tower, eastern-facing gable, parapets, and countless intricate facade details. A matching prison, also designed by Withers, was built on the same triangular block. In 1927, the Jefferson Market Prison was demolished, ahead of the construction of the New York Women’s House of Detention. The courthouse survived that development, but its long-term future was imperiled. When redistricting shifted court operations to another location 1945, demolition seemed likely. In the meantime, the Police Academy used the structure as a training facility. In the late 1950s, a group of local residents started a campaign to convert the former courthouse into a library — first disguised as an effort to restart the stalled clock on its tower. The scheme was approved in 1961, and the Jefferson Market Library opened to the public in 1967.

Jefferson Market Library ca. The courthouse and watchtower which we see today is all that remains of a complex of buildings which once included, in addition, a market and a jail. These buildings, on their triangular site, were all designed in a uniform style and represented a remarkably coherent piece of town planning carried out by the city government. The style can best be described as Victorian Gothic.

The New York Preservation Archive Project is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and celebrating the history of historic preservation in New York City. The Archive Project is devoted to celebrating neglected narratives of New York historic preservation using the archives that hold these stories. This collection includes a selection of historic sites that became flashpoints of the city's preservation movement(s). For more information, visit: www.nypap.org/phd-category/places/

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

By Robert Pigott When most New Yorkers think of courthouses, they visualize Foley Square in lower Manhattan or perhaps Court Street in Brooklyn. But there was a time when the City’s courthouses were not so centralized. If you travel to Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood and walk along 42nd Street towards the East River, when you get to Fourth Avenue, you will come upon a truly majestic building. An apparently recent sign out front says “Community Board 7.” But engraved in stone over the entrances on opposite sides of the building are the words “MAGISTRATES COURT” and “MUNICIPAL COURT.” This building unlocks the story of New York City’s lost neighborhood courthouses. Until a 1962 amendment of the New York State Constitution, there were Magistrates’ Courts handling minor criminal matters and Municipal Courts for small civil cases. By 1962, these courts had been abolished, and the City’s courthouses were largely centralized in each Borough. But from the late 19th century through the early 1960s, you could find courthouses in every corner of New York City. Some were very modest structures that you would not expect to have been preserved. Others were very grand structures that either has been put to new uses or are sadly lying fallow. Read this in its original format here.

Jefferson Market Library, NYPL 425 Sixth Avenue Designed by Frederick Clarke Withers of Vaux and Withers, 1874-77; renovation: Giorgio Cavaglieri, 1967 In the 1830s, this small, triangular block became the heart of Greenwich Village when Jefferson Market was built here. In addition to the market, the block also had a small Police Court, prison and watchtower. In the 1870s and 80s, the block was renewed with a picturesque complex of buildings designed by the firm of Vaux and Withers, including the Third Judicial District Courthouse. This magnificent building, designed in the High Victorian Gothic style, is the only remnant of that complex. It features a rich, polychrome palette of materials with bandcourses, Gothic arches, stained glass windows, turrets, a large gable and variegated roof slates. The City seal is found on its Sixth Avenue façade. The crowning achievement is a prominent corner tower, whose top was designed as a fire lookout with an alarm bell and large clock faces to serve the community. When the building ceased to function as a courthouse in 1945, it briefly served as a Police Academy. The building was threatened with demolition in the late 1950s, but public outcry led to its conversion to a branch of the NYPL, one of the first adaptive reuse projects in the country. In 1996, after 135 years of silence, a campaign to reinstate the ringing of the fire bell was successful, and it has rung the hours from 9:00am to 10:00pm ever since.The library is located within the Greenwich Village Historic District, is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark.

New York City has three public library systems: the New York Public Library (in Manhattan, The Bronx and Staten Island), the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library. The reason for these independent systems was due to their origins prior to the 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs. The City of New York’s first free circulating library was established in 1878, even though multiple bills were passed by the New York Legislature for such a public service beginning in the 1830s. Over those decades, private libraries served as research facilities for scholars and students, but none were open to the general public. In 1880, the New York Free Circulating Library (NYFCL) was established, operating out of several rooms at 36 Bond Street and funded by private donors. The NYFCL was formally incorporated in 1884, and its first building opened at 135 Second Avenue (site 1). Between 1884 and 1901, 11 branches were built, consisting of 1.6 million volumes. In 1901, steel baron Andrew Carnegie retired and devoted his energy and wealth to the development of libraries throughout the English-speaking world, including New York City. This would forever change the institution. The New York Public Library (NYPL) was formed in 1895 with the consolidation of three private corporations: the Astor Library (founded by John Jacob Astor in 1849), the Lenox Library (founded by James Lenox in 1870) and The Tilden Trust (a fund established in 1886 by former New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden). The NYFCL also joined this consolidation in 1901 in order to benefit from Carnegie’s gift of $5.2 million for 67 library branches to be built between 1901 and 1929 (56 are still standing). Carnegie’s only stipulation was that the city acquire the sites and establish building maintenance plans. To design the buildings, the NYPL organized a committee of architects: Charles F. McKim, Walter Cook and John M. Carrère. In order to stylistically link the branches and save money, the committee decided on a uniform scale, interior layout, character and materials palette for the buildings. Construction for the main branch, a grand building in the heart of Manhattan, began in 1901. The NYPL became and remains one of the leading research institutions in the world. Queens’ first public library was established in Flushing in 1858, and became a free circulating library in 1869. In 1901, the borough’s independent libraries merged to become the Queens Borough Library, and were eventually housed in Carnegie- funded buildings. The system acquired its current name, the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL), in 1907. Brooklyn’s first free public library was that of the Pratt Institute, which opened in 1888. In 1892, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) was created through state legislation, and in 1901, Carnegie signed a contract for the construction of libraries in Brooklyn. Both the QBPL and the BPL were established as independent corporations with trustees appointed by the mayor and civil service staff. In the broad sense, New York City’s library systems are one of its finest resources. In the local sense, its branches function as community anchors, both for the services they provide and for their architectural contributions to each neighborhood’s sense of place. While this brochure focuses on the origins of the city’s public library systems and offers a glimpse at some of its early extant branches, there are over 200 public libraries across the five boroughs, as well as private and institutional libraries that are also well worth visiting.