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The Jefferson Market Branch, New York Public Library, once known as the Jefferson Market Courthouse, is located at 425 Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), on the southwest corner of West 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, on a triangular plot formed by Greenwich Avenue and West 10th Street. It was originally built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse from 1874 to 1877, and was designed by architect Frederick Clarke Withers of the firm of Vaux and Withers. Faced with demolition in 1958, public outcry led to its reuse as a branch of the New York Public Library. The building is now part of the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission's Greenwich Village Historic District, created in 1969.〔, pp.53-54〕 The ''AIA Guide to New York City'' calls the building "A mock Neuschwansteinian assemblage ... of leaded glass, steeply sloping roofs, gables, pinnacles, Venetian Gothic embellishments, and an intricate tower and clock; one of the City's most remarkable buildings."〔 ==History and architecture== A tall octagonal wooden fire lookout tower was the first building on the site, built circa 1833, located in the center of the merchants' sheds at the Jefferson Market that had been established at this site in 1832 and named for the late President. Court sessions were held in the Jefferson Assembly Rooms that rose above the market sheds. The wood tower and the market structures were torn down by the city to build a new courthouse, the adjacent Jefferson Market Prison building that stood on the corner of West 10th Street and Greenwich Avenue and new coordinated market housing (built in 1883). Of the carefully massed eclectic and picturesque group, only the former Courthouse now remains. The commission for the new courthouse went to the firm of Vaux and Withers, but as Calvert Vaux was busy with the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the design fell to his partner, the English-born Frederick Clarke Withers.〔 pp.135-136〕 Withers came from the same background as Vaux,〔 so it is not unusual this his High Victorian Gothic design was similar in some respects to the "Ruskinian Gothic" aesthetic of Vaux's early buildings, such as in its polychrome materials – red brick, black stone, white granite, yellow sandstone trim and variegated roof slates. Reasoning that a building with a clock tower was going to look like a church no matter what he did, Withers decided to add church-like touches with non-religious content, such as the tympanum which shows a scene from ''The Merchant of Venice'' instead of the usual scene of Christ sitting in judgment or other ecclesiastical subject matter.〔 The building also features stained glass windows and a fountain decorated with birds and animals.〔 The courthouse was completed in 1877, and in 1885 a panel of American architects sponsored by ''American Architect and Building News'' voted it the fifth most beautiful building in America.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jefferson Market Library」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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