Author: New York Architecture.
Title: Competition for the New York Court House MCMXIII. Edited by authority of the Court House Board.
Description: NY, Architectural Book Publishing [1913]. Hefty folio, 52x36cm, loose as issued in publisher's portfolio (rubbed and worn but solid); five leaves of preliminary text and 88 plates: plans elevations and perspectives. Ex library with small stamps on the preliminary pages and the back of the plates; a couple of marginal tears; used but decent enough. ¶ Twelve major architects were invited and a preliminary competition selected another ten to enter the competition for a new New York Supreme Court. Ten were originally invited and the New York Times complained about the regulations and about missing names like Cass Gilbert, George B. Post, Cram Goodhue & Ferguson and a couple of others. Whatever effect this complaint had, Gilbert and Post were included but the competition remained firmly unpublic. Guy Lowell won with a grand circular mass that was then revised, by the time it was built, into a completely different building. The first critics of note were the Supreme Court Justices who said they preferred the old Tweed building to Lowell's design. And the Justices remained critics of note. Despite resiting and revisions over the next few years they remained implacably opposed to a circular court building. But it was economics that killed it in the end. All the entries are included - a fair division of four plates each - and as to be expected the temple is predominant, more or less adapted or added to. McKim Mead and White's design looks they had a hotel in mind and of the few that went upwards, as New York was meant to go, some have put an awkward (or picturesque depending on taste) tower on a temple. George and Edward Blum's tower is the only building that truly looks modern in the New York of 1913 but modernity and elegance don't personify the weight and dignity of the law.

Keywords: architecture design c20th America New York competitions modernism