Look at that building. Victorian Gothic — red brick, stained glass, a clock tower that looks like it belongs in a fairy tale. In eighteen eighty-five, a poll of architects voted it the fifth most beautiful building in the United States. It's a public library now. Before that, it was a courthouse. And the things that happened in this courthouse are — considerably less beautiful.
First — this site. Before the Gothic building you see, there was a wooden fire lookout tower here — a tall structure where a watchman stood scanning the skyline for smoke. When he spotted a fire, he rang a bell in a specific code so firefighters knew which district to run to. The code for Greenwich Village was — appropriately — thirteen. That wooden tower served the city for decades until, in eighteen fifty-one, it caught fire and burned down. The fire lookout tower. Burned down. Nobody in Greenwich Village found this surprising. The courthouse you're looking at was built on the same site in eighteen seventy-se
ven.
Now — remember the arch? Stanford White, the most famous architect in New York. I said he'd come up again for reasons unrelated to architecture. Here's why.
In nineteen oh-six, Harry Kendall Thaw — a millionaire from Pittsburgh with a jealousy problem and an inheritance — walked into the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden, pulled out a pistol, and shot Stanford White three times in th
