Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State


Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State, First Department
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
New York State Register of Historic Places
New York City Landmark



Location	35 East 25th Street Manhattan, New York, U.S.

The Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State is a courthouse in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The courthouse is used by the First Department of the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division. The original three-story building, at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 25th Street, was designed by James Brown Lord in the Renaissance Revival style and was finished in 1899. A six-story annex to the north, on Madison Avenue, was designed by Rogers & Butler and completed in 1955.

The facade of both the original building and its annex is made almost entirely out of marble. The courthouse's exterior was originally decorated with 21 sculptures from 16 separate artists; one of the sculptures was removed in 1955. The main entrance is through a double-height colonnade on 25th Street with a decorative pediment; there is also a smaller colonnade on Madison Avenue. The far northern end of the annex's facade contains a Holocaust Memorial by Harriet Feigenbaum, and the sculpture NOW by Shahzia Sikander is mounted atop the building. Inside the courthouse, ten artists created murals for the main hall and the courtroom. The interiors are decorated with elements such as marble walls, woodwork, and paneled and coffered ceilings; the courtroom also has stained-glass windows and a stained-glass ceiling dome. The remainder of the building contains various offices, judges' chambers, and other rooms.

The Appellate Division Courthouse was proposed in the late 1890s to accommodate the Appellate Division's First Department, which had been housed in rented quarters since its founding in 1894. Construction took place between 1896 and 1899, with a formal opening on January 2, 1900. Following unsuccessful attempts to relocate the court in the 1930s and 1940s, the northern annex was built between 1952 and 1955, and the original courthouse was also renovated. The structure was again renovated in the 1980s and in the 2000s. Throughout the courthouse's existence, its architecture has received largely positive commentary. The Appellate Division Courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its facade and interior are both New York City designated landmarks.

Site

The Appellate Division Courthouse occupies the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 25th Street in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City, New York. The rectangular land lot covers approximately 14,812 square feet (1,400 m²; 0.34 acres), with a frontage, or width, of 98.5 feet (30.0 m) on Madison Avenue to the west and 150 feet (46 m) on 25th Street to the south. The original structure measured 150 feet (46 m) wide along 25th Street, with a depth of 50 feet (15 m) on its western end (facing Madison Avenue) and 100 feet (30 m) on its eastern end.

Madison Square Park is across Madison Avenue, while the New York Merchandise Mart occupies the site directly to the north. Other nearby buildings include the New York Life Building one block north, the Metropolitan Life North Building across 25th Street to the south, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower one block south.

Architecture

The original three-story Beaux-Arts courthouse, at the corner of Madison Avenue and 25th Street, was built between 1896 and 1899. It was designed by James Brown Lord in an Italian Renaissance Revival style with Palladian-inspired details, which include tall columns, a high base, and flat walls. The structure has been likened to an 18th-century English country house because of its Palladian details, and it was similar in scale to low-rise residential buildings at the time of its construction. A six-story annex next to the original building on Madison Avenue was designed by Rogers & Butler in 1952, with a marble facade and plain windows.

Sixteen sculptors, led by Daniel Chester French, worked on the courthouse's exterior; all of the sculptors were members of the then-new National Sculpture Society. Lord, with the assistance of the National Society of Mural Painters, commissioned ten artists to execute allegorical murals for the courthouse's interior. According to the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services, at the time of the building's construction, it featured decorations by more sculptors than any other edifice in the United States.

Facade

The facade is made almost entirely of marble. The original marble was quarried from North Adams, Massachusetts, except for small portions quarried from Proctor, Vermont; the Massachusetts marble has since been replaced with Alabama marble. A low marble parapet is placed in front of the building at street level. It contains white marble sculptures depicting subjects related to law; there were originally 21 sculptures, but the Muhammad sculpture was removed in 1955. The sculptures were treated as a key part of the design, rather than "mere adornment", and they accounted for one-fourth of the total construction cost. While many contemporary buildings in New York City contained niches for statues that were never installed, the statues on the Appellate Division Courthouse were a focal point of the building upon its completion.

All of the sculptures were of fictional or dead figures. Although members of the then-prominent Tammany Hall political ring had advocated for the inclusion of sculptures of living people, the artists were against the idea of statues that looked similar from a distance. As designed, the building's statues measure 12 feet (3.7 m) tall on average; at the time, such large statues were usually installed on much larger buildings. Many of the statues are installed in pairs and are placed directly above the facade's columns and vertical piers. The freestanding figures were carved out of Lasser marble and cost $20,000 each (equivalent to $774,000 in 2025).

25th Street

The primary elevation of the facade is along 25th Street to the south. At the center of the 25th Street elevation is a portico; this consists of a colonnade of six double-height columns, which support an entablature and a triangular pediment with sculptures. Each of the columns rises above a pedestal and is fluted; the capitals, or tops of the columns, are designed in the Corinthian order. The columns measure 24 feet (7.3 m) tall. At street level, "two pedestals holding two monumental seated figures" of Wisdom and Force, by Frederick Ruckstull, flank a set of stairs leading to the portico. Both statues are variously cited as measuring 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 m) tall or 7 feet 6 inches (2.29 m) tall. They each depict a heroically sized male figure; the Force sculpture is of a man wearing armor, while the Wisdom sculpture holds an open book.

Recessed behind the columns of the portico are five bays of doorways; the outer two bays are topped by triangular pediments with sculptures, while the center three bays are topped by arched pediments. Maximilian N. Schwartzott designed four sculptures for the triangular pediments, which were intended to represent the four periods of the day: The triangular pediment to the left (west) is ornamented with representations of morning and night, while those to the right (east) are ornamented with representations of noon and evening. The spandrels above these openings are 5 feet (1.5 m) long. There are windows with balustrades on the second story, above the doorways.

On either side of the central portico are four bays of windows with molded frames. Within these bays, the first-story windows have triangular or arched pediments, while the second-story windows are almost square. On the entirety of the 25th Street elevation, the second floor is topped by an entablature and a cornice with modillions and dentils. The third floor is set back slightly and includes rectangular windows, a simple entablature, and a rooftop parapet with sculptures. On the pediment is Charles Henry Niehaus's Triumph of Law, a group of five figures. The grouping is variously cited as measuring 43 feet (13 m) wide and 9 feet (2.7 m) high, or 32 feet (9.8 m) wide and 14 feet (4.3 m) high. This sculptural group contains icons such as tablets of the law, a crescent moon, a ram, and an owl; the center of the grouping depicts a seated woman flanked by two nude male figures.

Madison Avenue

The Madison Avenue elevation to the west is narrower than that on 25th Street. The original facade there contains a colonnade of four fluted columns with Corinthian capitals, which may have been intended to make that facade look larger. There is a balustrade running between the bottoms of each column. Behind the colonnade, there are arched windows on the first floor and rectangular windows with balustrades on the second floor, similar to the windows in the entrance portico. As on the 25th Street elevation, the second floor is topped by an entablature and a cornice.

The third floor is also set back slightly and is similar in design to that on 25th Street. The third-floor windows on Madison Avenue are flanked by four caryatids, or female figures, representing the seasons, which were sculpted by Thomas Shields Clarke. From left to right are Winter, next to a censer with a flame; Autumn, holding grapes in her hands; Summer, holding a sheaf of wheat and a sickle; and Spring, which is nude above her waist and holds a garland.

The six-story annex north of the original building is made of Alabama marble and was intended to be architecturally similar to the original courthouse. There are plain rectangular windows on each story of the annex except the first story, where the windows are topped with lintels and cornices. In addition, there are a horizontal belt course and a cornice above the annex's sixth floor.

Roof

As designed in 1896, the original courthouse's roof is 56 feet (17 m) above ground level. On the roof, there are nine freestanding sculptures of figures depicting historical, religious, and legendary lawgivers. These statues are of the same height and proportion, are robed, and appear with various attributes associated with the law, such as a book, scroll, tablet, sword, charter, or scepter. Originally, there were ten freestanding sculptures (eight facing 25th Street and two facing Madison Avenue). On Madison Avenue, the northern figure is Philip Martiny's sculpture of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, while the southern figure is William Couper's sculpture of the Hebrew prophet and lawman Moses. Between Confucius and Moses is Karl Bitter's sculptural group Peace, which consists of a central figure with uplifted arms, flanked by a female and a male.

Charles Albert Lopez's Mohammed originally stood on the western end of the 25th Street elevation but was removed in 1955 following protests against the image of the prophet from Muslim nations. The next sculptures to the east are Edward Clark Potter's Zoroaster, depicting the founder of Zoroastrianism; Jonathan Scott Hartley's Alfred the Great, depicting an Anglo-Saxon king; George Edwin Bissell's Lycurgus, depicting a Spartan legislator; and Herbert Adams's Solon, depicting an Athenian legislator. There are three more statues to the east: John Talbott Donoghue's Saint Louis, symbolizing the 13th-century French king; Henry Augustus Lukeman's Manu, symbolizing the author of Manusmriti; and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown's Justinian, symbolizing the 6th-century Byzantine emperor. The remaining sculptures on 25th Street were each relocated to the next pedestal to the west after Mohammed was removed, and the easternmost pedestal, which originally supported Justinian, was left vacant. The center of the facade contains a sculptural group with three sculptures by Daniel Chester French. A 12-foot-high (3.7 m) female sculpture of Justice is at the center, flanked by male sculptures of Power and Study.

Other sculptures

The far northern end of the annex's Madison Avenue facade contains a Holocaust memorial by Harriet Feigenbaum. The memorial was conceived in 1986 by Francis T. Murphy, chief justice of the First Department, who believed that "a symbol of injustice is just as important" to the court as the "symbols of justice" on the original courthouse. The sculpture consists of a map of the Auschwitz concentration camp at its base, as well as a 38-foot-tall (12 m) marble column intended to resemble the smokestack of a Nazi concentration camp.