Midtown Community Court | courthouse, 1896_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

 courthouse, 1896_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

6-story Renaissance-revival courthouse completed in 1896. Designed by John H. Duncan, it was originally constructed as the Seventh District Police Court and Prison and the Eleventh Judicial District Courthouse. The prison facing 53rd Street was removed during a 1968 renovation, and an annex was added.

The Midtown Community Court is a municipal court of law established in 1993 in the Times Square neighborhood of New York City. The court focuses on quality-of-life offenses, such as prostitution, shoplifting, farebeating and vandalism. The courthouse has inspired dozens of replications both in the United States, in cities including Austin, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon, and abroad, in countries as varied as South Africa, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia.

The Midtown Community Court was established in 1993 as a collaboration between the New York State Unified Court System and the Center for Court Innovation. The court works in partnership with local residents, businesses and social service agencies in order to organize community service projects and provide on-site social services, including drug treatment, mental health counseling, and job training. Unlike most conventional courts, the Midtown Court combines punishment and help, requiring low-level offenders to pay back the neighborhood through community service while at the same time offering them help with problems that often underlie criminal behavior.

The front facade is clad in tan brick above a rusticated granite base. The front block has three double-height stories with a recessed tan brick single-height top floor (added in 1928), while the red brick rear wings have four and six single-height floors. The granite-sheathed base is pierce by three large round-arched openings with voussoirs that are flanked by two smaller rectangular service doors; foliated cartouches in T-shaped panels fill the spandrels and support a panel (reading VII DISTRICT POLICE COURT) just below a projecting band course.

Terra-cotta ornamentation enriches a prominent projecting Corinthian order "frontispiece" on the 2nd & 3rd floors, composed of tripartite window groups, the upper one of which suggests a Palladian window. Decorative detailing includes banded and fluted engaged columns, pilasters of fasces and bellflower design, a panel with the inscription "XI JUDICIAL DIST. COURT", and various motifs symbolic of justice and the City of New York. The 2nd & 3rd floors have single-windows on either side of the frontispiece. Those on the 2nd floor have broken pediments supported by scroll brackets and are ornamented by cartouches with beavers. The 3rd-floor side windows (installed in 1928) are set within simple molded surrounds with corbeled sills. The cornice of the building, above a frieze with a sword-of-justice motif, is embellished by dentils and modillions. A projecting central section of the parapet wall has three panels with foliated cartouches separated by posts with console brackets, and is flanked by balustrades. A flagpole projects from the center of the parapet wall.

After the centralization of the Magistrates and Municipal Courts, the space was leased from 1944-1961 by the General Services Administration for the use of the Navy Shore Patrol and, later, the Armed Services Police Department. In 1962, the West Side YMCA Clinton Youth Center occupied the building. Upon the negotiation of a long-term lease in 1969, the rear prison wing was demolished in conjunction with a renovation of the facility. In 1979 the building became the Court House Cultural Center, and has been used since that time by the American Theater of Actors, a non-profit theater company, which converted two of the large former courtrooms into theaters. The Midtown Community Court moved in here in 1993.

In 2012, a new 7-story rear wing was constructed. It is faced in white metal panels featuring two bays of large windows with thin metal mullions. The first bay, toward the center of the lot, has double-windows, and the east bay has triple-windows, the eastern two of which angle back and down at each floor, creating a drooping effect.

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