Queenswalk: Queens General Courthouse, Jamaica

We all have certain expectations as to what our civic and business institutions to look like. These expectations are more psychological than physical. We want our banks to be sturdy and look like they could withstand a bomb, and still protect our money. We like our hospitals to look modern and cutting edge, like the medicine practiced inside. And we want our courthouses to look like the Law: strong, rather severe and serious. The Queens General Courthouse meets our expectations on that front quite well.

It was designed at a time when just about everything was severe and serious, as the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. The architecture of the day matched the mood of the nation: rather stark, clean lined, with a minimum of ornament. There was little frivolity in the air and certainly no money for excess decoration. In spite of the constraints of the style and the day, what resulted was quite a fine building. And contrary to what one might think, the architects managed to include some ornament as well, lifting the design from merely frugal to quietly elegant.

Queens County was a land of farms and small towns when it was annexed to Greater New York City in 1898. As the various communities within the new borough grew, Jamaica took its place as a commercial and civic hub. It was in the physical center of the county, and was convenient to public transportation, including the Long Island Railroad. Jamaica Avenue itself was a continuation of Fulton Street, which ran from the tip of Long Island, across the length of Brooklyn, to the shores of the East River and on to Manhattan. In the 18th and 19th century, goods could travel from Montauk to Manhattan, and never leave that one road.

As Queens grew, so too did the need for more courthouses. In addition to criminal courts, there were magistrate courts, civil courts, Surrogate and Appellate courts, Supreme Court, family court, even traffic and small claims court, and more. Every community wanted a court building, for reasons of convenience, prestige, and jobs. By 1929, the shortage of courtrooms was so great that the city decided it had to build a new courthouse in Queens, pronto. Court cases were actually being held in rented rooms, and one court was sharing space with the Sanitation Dept. Queens needed one central building large enough to hold several different kinds of courts, with enough courtrooms, judges’ chambers, clerk’s offices and all of the other necessary rooms for the dispensation and preservation of justice.

A few different communities were considered, but in the end, convenience and transportation were paramount, and Jamaica’s central location and transportation facilities were the tipping point in its favor. That, and the large vacant lot; a 96,000 square foot plot on Sutphin Boulevard between 88th and 89th Avenues, owned by the Brooklyn Catholic Diocese. It had been used as an athletic field, and was now empty land. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia lobbied hard to get WPA grants to help fund the land purchase and the building of the courthouse. In 1938, after quite an inspired sales pitch to an unconvinced audience, he convinced Washington to give the city a grant of $2,175,930 towards the building campaign. The city came up with the rest of the money.

The building was already designed by the time LaGuardia got the money. The plans had been drawn up in 1935 by Alfred H. Eccles and William W. Knowles, of Long Island City. They just didn’t know where the building was going to go. The late 1930s were a boom time for Queens, so much was going on there during this time, as the borough saw the building of the Triborough Bridge in 1936, the IND 8th Avenue Subway in 1937, as well as the Queens-Midtown Tunnel (1939), LaGuardia Airport and the Queens General Hospital, both between 1931 and 1935. There was also the World’s Fair being built, as well as a multitude of schools, playgrounds and parkways. That year, 1939, saw the Queens Chamber of Commerce proclaim Queens “the greatest center of building activity in the world.”

The Queens General Courthouse is an excellent example of the American Modern Classical Style, popular in the 1920s and ‘30s. Unlike the previous Classical Revival movement which carefully reproduced and copied classical forms and detail, the Modern Classical style allowed for, and encouraged free interpretations; a thoughtful twisting and exaggeration of the motifs and forms. The result was a modern 20th century building, constructed with steel and contemporary construction methods, with familiar classical forms, some used in new and very interesting ways.

The best example is the entrance: the temple-front courthouse, a staple of Classical Revival architecture in America dating back to the Greek Revival buildings of the 1820s and ‘30s. The form is familiar – the ideas of Greek democracy and Roman law resonate strongly in American political thought and in its legal architecture. But here, the temple front, with its wide marble stairs, is just one part of a larger whole.

The courthouse was co-designed by Alfred H. Eccles, a Queens man, born in Astoria and trained as an architect and engineer. He was employed as an inspector for the Queens Department of Buildings, and in 1919 opened his own architectural firm. He specialized in commercial and civic buildings, as well as apartment buildings, all of which were in various parts of Queens. His training as a civil engineer, and his expertise in the Building Code was invaluable to his practice. He later held positions as advisor to the Dept. of Buildings, the Code Committee of the Real Estate Board of Long Island, and membership in the New York Society of Architects. He was also a president of that organization in 1941.

The other architect on the project was William Welles Knowles. He was born in Harlem in 1871, and attended City College. He got his first architectural training with a diploma in architectural drafting from the Metropolitan Museum Art School, which he turned into a job as a draftsman for famed architect Richard M. Hunt. In 1893, he traveled in Europe and stayed to enroll in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1895. That famed school trained some of the finest turn of the 20th century architects in America, as well as Europe. He only stayed a year, and returned to NYC to open his own office in Manhattan. One of his first commissions was the YMCA on 124th Street in Harlem.

Knowles and his wife Suzanne moved to Flushing in 1903. Although his office was still in Manhattan, most of his later work was in Queens and Long Island. It included several commissions for the NY & Queens Light and Power Company, a post office and several other large civic and banking commissions in Flushing. In 1934, Knowles was appointed special consultant on architectural matters for Queens, by Mayor LaGuardia. He led that position until his death in 1944. Knowles and Eccles partnered for this one project only, and it is the best thing either of them did.

The courthouse is based on a building Knowles designed for a Queens Civic Center complex that was never built. The two men took his idea for a minor building in that complex and made it the centerpiece of modern Queens. The courthouse is a large E-shaped building that allows for plenty of natural light in the rear and sides, and accommodates the suites needed for 19 courthouses and their accompanying judge’s chambers, jury rooms, law library, clerk’s offices, and other necessary rooms. The E also allows for an impressive central staircase and a bank of elevators.

The building is seven stories, plus basement, and has three double-height stories with mezzanines for the Municipal and State Supreme Court, which have upper balconies. The law library is housed on the sixth floor behind a series of giant arches that stretch along Sutphin Avenue. Every element of the design was well thought out, following not only modern function, but symbolic classical philosophy in building. For example, the courthouse is clad in uniform colored white Alabama limestone, on a granite base; the even-toned stone a symbol of the uniformity and fairness of Justice.

The courthouse opened with great acclaim in 1939. The location did prove to be ideal, and the building had room enough for all of the necessary courts, as well as the County Clerk, sheriff, motor vehicles, naturalization and marriage bureaus and the Queens Bar Association. But as Queens and Nassau Counties grew, more room was needed for court functions, and all of them relocated elsewhere. By 1981, the courthouse was known as the Supreme Court Building, as they had taken over practically the whole thing.

Unfortunately, New York City in the post war years suffered from the delusion that nothing in the city needed fixing, ever, and by the end of the century, the Queens Court House, like almost all city structures and institutions, was a mess, due to deferred maintenance. The fiscal crisis had taken its toll. There was a huge crack in the roof that allowed water to leak all throughout the building, and all of its systems needed upgrading. The sidewalks, windows, HVAC system and other systems in the courthouse all needed replacement, repair or upgrades.

Beginning in 1996, the firm of Gran Sultan Associated took on Phase 1 of this massive project. In 2002, the second phase was undertaken by the New York State Dormitory Authority, with Henry Spring of WASA Architects spearheading the project. Because a crane used in the restoration damaged the parapet of the section of the building holding the central ceremonial staircase, a lawsuit followed. Because of the litigation, that part of the building was not repaired until 2009. There is still plenty of work to be done, but the Queens County Courthouse remains one of the most impressive buildings in their entire borough, a fine symbol of civic pride and great architecture.

The Court House was designated a New York City landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, in 2010. Most of the information in this piece was taken from that designation report. GMAP

(1940s postcard. Ebay)