Tweed Courthouse
The Tweed Courthouse is a historic courthouse building in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in the Italianate style with Romanesque Revival interiors. It is the second-oldest city government building in the borough, after City Hall. Modern restoration and historic preservation were completed in 2001.
About Tweed Courthouse in brief
The Tweed Courthouse is a historic courthouse building in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in the Italianate style with Romanesque Revival interiors. It is the second-oldest city government building in the borough, after City Hall. 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. Modern restoration and historic preservation were completed in 2001. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, and its facade and interior are both NY City designated landmarks. It has since housed the NYC Department of Education’s headquarters on its upper floors and schools on its ground level. The original design was inspired by the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., which was being used for other sub-national government buildings at the time of the Tweed’s construction. The courthouse’s original design included an iron dome with a high thobolate, though this was replaced with a stainless steel-over-rubber surface in 1979 or 1979. The main wing was designed by Kellum in the style of a Renaissance palazzo, described as the “Anglo-Italian style.’’ It is located in the Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan, in the northern portion of City Hall Park and just north of New York city Hall. Several buildings face the courthouse building on Broadway, including the Broadway–Chambers Building, Tower 270, the Rogers Peet Building, and the Home Life Building.
The structure measures 258 by 149 feet, the longer side being located on the west–east axis. The entrance portico on the main Chambers Street facade rises three and a half stories from a low granite curb. Panels of granite, Tuckahoe marble, and Sheffield marble are anchored to the outside of the brick structure, with rusticated stone at the basement level. The structure lies atop a low foundation made of granite. 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 TweedCourthouse includes a central section, two wings on the western and eastern ends, and an annex on its southern portion. It is four and ahalf stories tall, and includes a large entry stairway that approached a triangular portico, supported by massive columns in massive Corinthian Corinthian order, above the ground floor’s pediments. It also has a basement with rustication pediments above the basement, above and below the ground level, and a large entrance stairway with Corinthian columns. 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 on the top of the building in 2001, when it was added to the list of NY City Landmarks. The most prominent element from the original design is a high dome running along the roof of the courthouse.
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This page is based on the article Tweed Courthouse published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
