The 1893 Harlem Courthouse - 170 East 121st Street

 

The spiraling windows of the corner tower conform to the marble and iron staircase inside.  photograph by Americasroof

On December 13, 1890, Commissioner of Public Works Thomas Francis Gilroy "presented the plans for the new Harlem Court House at 121st street and Sylvan place," as reported by The Sun.  Those plans were still being drawn up by Thom & Wilson, which projected the cost at $200,000 (about $7.3 million in 2026).  The article noted that the structure would "have accommodations for the district, police, and civil courts.  There will be forty-eight cells in the prison."

Gilroy, who had just stepped into his role a year earlier, most likely wanted this project to be scandal free.  The construction of the previous Harlem Courthouse just two decades earlier was one of most egregious and publicized examples of graft and corruption within William "Boss" Tweed's Tammany Hall administration.  

Ground was broken in 1891 and construction continued for two years.  If Gilroy had hoped that everything would proceed smoothly, he was disappointed.  On July 7, 1892, The Evening World reported that work had completely stopped.  When the marble cutters went on strike because contractor Maxwell & Dempsey was using non-union men, "all the other trades went out in support of the strikers."

Two months later, on September 4, 1892, the New-York Tribune reported that the Plasterers' Association had accused H. Sinclair's Sons (the contractor for doing the plaster work) of "not only employing non-union men, mostly cheap Italian laborers...but they are not complying with the specification."  The union charged "that instead of papier mache mouldings and ornaments which are called for in the contract, only common plaster is supplied."  And the problems continued.  The following month The Evening World reported that the carpenters' union "is having trouble with Contractor Lantry" for employing non-union men.

Finally, just as 1892 drew to a close, the Harlem Courthouse was completed.  Thom & Wilson had blended its Romanesque Revival design with Victorian Gothic detailing, most evident in the octagonal clock tower and the gothic crockets that sprouted along the roofline.  Above a rusticated granite base, the courthouse was clad in red brick and trimmed in bluestone and terra cotta.  The 121st Street and Sylvan Place elevations were mirror images of one another, both containing asymmetrical large and small gables, the larger of which embraced dramatic double-height, arched triptych openings.

(Incidentally, the block-long Sylvan Place was the last surviving remnant of the Eastern Post Road which, as The New York Times recalled in April 1920, "was the main route out of the city to Boston.")

The Harlem Courthouse was opened on New Year's Day 1893.  There was no fanfare as the judges walked in at 9:30 a.m. and went to business.  There were, nevertheless, some welcoming gestures.  The World reported, "Across the large window, back of the Judge's desk, stretched the letters which formed the word 'Welcome.'  They were formed of white immortelles."  The article somewhat snidely remarked, "It is not known whether the floral salutation was addressed to the Judge, the New Year, or the twenty prisoners who lined up before the desk."  Police Justice Welde's court attachés presented him with a floral horseshoe that read "Happy New Year, C. W."

The Evening World opined, "The Ninth [District Court] has the most gorgeous apartments in the new Harlem Court-House.  There is not a better equipped civil court in New York than this, from point of location and convenience."

That first day's docket was mundane.  The first case heard in the new courthouse was that of saloon owner W. F. Aiken.  The World said, "He was arrested for disorderly conduct, but was discharged."  Then came Michael Dwyer, who drove a grocery wagon.  He was charged with colliding with a cable car on Amsterdam Avenue and Manhattan Street.  "The wagon was upset and Dwyer went out on his head.  The gripman had a hand crushed and one finger broken," reported the article.  And 17-year-old Peter Hickey faced the charge of stealing a pair of shoes from Meyer Mouser's store.

The World published a woefully inaccurate sketch of the new building on January 2, 1893. (copyright expired)

Other cases, of course, were less routine.  On August 5, 1899, for instance, Mrs. Margaret Shakett was arrested for abandoning her three-week-old child.  A pedestrian saw her get off a trolly car "at a lonely place and leave the baby on a stone wall on the Simpson estate," reported the New-York Tribune.  While admitting to the crime, Margaret Shakett emotionally described her situation to the judge.  Her husband had abandoned her several months earlier and she had lived since then by selling her furniture piece-by-piece.  She had been unable to find work until she had no money to support her or her baby.  The New-York Tribune recounted, "she decided to leave the infant at a place where she thought it would be quickly found by persons in good circumstances."

Thom & Wilson provided a more accurate rendering in 1891.  The History of the Portland Cement Industry in the United States 1900 (copyright expired)

After hearing her heart-wrenching tale, the judge dismissed Margaret Shakett.  Later that day, however, a representative of the National Home for Children on 51st Street appeared to say that Mrs. Shakett "was the woman who had abandoned many babies in different parts of the city."

Kingdon Gould was the privileged son of George Jay Gould and Edith Kingdon Gould.  Apparently feeling that his family's wealth and stature made him immune to everyday rules, as a freshman at Columbia University, he refused to wear a freshman's cap, infuriating members of the sophomore class.  When they attempted to force him to wear it, he pulled out a revolver and fired over their heads, sending them running.

Gould's cavalier attitude about rules and laws was reflected again in 1908 when he was arrested on May 17 for "speeding an automobile."  He posted $100 bond to appear in the Harlem Courthouse to stand trial.  The 21-year-old did not appear.  Rather than forfeit his bond, the court gave him a second chance, postponing the case for a week.  On June 1, The Sun reported that the judge "directed that Gould plead yesterday, which he did not do."  Instead, said the article, "It is said that Kingdon Gould has gone to Europe for the summer."  The judge issued a bench warrant for the insolent young man's arrest.

A disturbing case came before the Police Court on January 10, 1912.  Walter Freeman, a black man who worked as a sleeping car porter, and an unnamed white man rented a small office on West 133rd Street.  Freeman then sent for another Pullman porter, Frank Foster, and told him that he needed to find employees for a "palatial" hotel that was about to open in Cuba.  The Evening World reported, "He instructed Foster to hustle out and get hold of from eighty to a hundred young, alert negroes for good jobs in Havana."

Foster rounded up hallboys, bellmen, porters and elevator operators.  Freeman "hired" them, but only after they paid $3 or $5 in advance for their uniforms.  The men quit their jobs, and some "pawned their overcoats" to get enough money for the uniform advances.  On January 11, The Evening World added, "And one negro pawned his shoes yesterday to make up $5 to give Freeman, figuring that he was going to a warm climate and wouldn't need shoes until he got to work, when he could probably borrow a pair."

Walter Freeman told the group that their passage to Havana had been paid.  On the freezing morning of January 11, the 81 men stood on the pier to board the liner Mexico.  "All of them carried grips or suitcases, but many had no overcoats and one was without shoes," said the article.  "No passage had been engaged for the fourscore negroes by Freeman or anybody else."

The duped men traveled back north to the Harlem Courthouse where they lodged their complaint against Walter Freeman.  The Evening World reported that a police officer who went to the West 133rd address was told that "Freeman disappeared last night."

photograph by Jerry Spearman, via the New York Landmarks Conservancy

In a case that recalled that of Margaret Shakett years earlier, on May 8, 1925 Mrs. Augusta Geisen-Volks appeared in court to answer charges of running an "infantorium" on East 86th Street where "twenty-two children had died there within a year."  The widow of a Prussian army officer, she took in unwanted infants, presumably for adoption.  

At the time of Augusta Geisen-Volks's disturbing trial, Victor Wahlberg had wound the clocks here every week since the building's opening.  He not only wound these clocks, but every clock in city-owned buildings throughout the city.  He came to America from Stockholm at the age of 17 in 1890.  Having been a watchmaker's apprentice at home, he got the clock-winding job in 1892.  The New York Times explained on January 10, 1933 that once a week since then, "Mr. Wahlberg had gone the rounds from City Hall to Harlem Courthouse, winding, oiling and repairing the municipal clocks."  

The reason for New York Times's article was that after 40 years and having served under 13 mayors, Victor Wahlberg had lost his job.  On New Year's Day 1933, Hyman Goldschmidt took over the position, having undercut Wahlberg's bid for the contract by $366.  In his "somber flat," Wahlberg told a New York Times reporter, "I'll will get by."  Victor Wahlberg died in a nursing home on April 18, 1949.

The Great Depression saw the Works Progress Administration arise from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.  It created jobs for out-of-work Americans, including artists who suddenly found themselves decorating the walls and ceilings of municipal buildings.  In 1936, artist David Karfunkle was commissioned to adorn the third floor of the Harlem Courthouse.  His not-so-subtle message was depicted in his mural Exploitation of Labor and Hoarding of Wealth.

David Karfunkle at work on his powerful 1936 mural. from the Archives of American Art.

In 1953 the city established the Department of Air Pollution Control "to lead a scientific attack on air contamination," as explained by The New York Times.  On December 12, 1954, the newspaper reported that the Department's air pollution laboratory had lost its lease.  "With a limited choice of substitute quarters, the city must now decide whether to continue the infant laboratory or abandon it as too costly,"  said the article.  Under consideration, it said, "is the old Harlem Courthouse, a somewhat rundown structure at East 121st Street and Sylvan Place."

Two years later, on July 14, 1955, The New York Times reported, "The City's Air Pollution Control Laboratory moved yesterday to roomier quarters in the Harlem Courthouse."  The chemists now had "twice as much floor space," said the article, as its previous location.  

The building ceased to operate as a courthouse in 1961 and when the it was considered for individual landmark designation in June 1966, the Air Pollution Control Laboratory was its only tenant.  But within two years, as the Harlem Community Justice Center, the structure began offering services to local residents.