A Gothic reading salon beneath timber roof trusses, with pointed stained-glass bays and the clock tower visible through the entrance.
The Jefferson Market Courthouse rose at Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street between 1874 and 1877, designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Clarke Withers in red brick and limestone. An 1880s poll of architects voted it the fifth most beautiful building in the United States. After the courts left, preservationist Margot Gayle led a Village campaign to save it and restart its four faced clock. Architect Giorgio Cavaglieri converted it into a New York Public Library branch in 1967.
Source · Village Preservation ↗
Victorian Gothic red brick; pointed stained glass; timber roof; clock tower. Reading-room adaptation. Mood: village gothic. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.