Jefferson Market Library ca. 1938

The fanciful clock tower of the Jefferson Market Court, the tallest of Greenwich Village’s 19th-century buildings, was a local landmark that appeared in many of Abbott’s Village views. In 1877, Calvert Vaux and Frederic C. Withers designed this Ruskinian Gothic courthouse and jail to replace an old open market and wooden fire tower. In 1931, the jail was torn down for an eleven-story women’s house of detention, which in turn was torn down in 1974 and replaced by a community garden. Abbott photographed the front of the courthouse in 1935, revealing the full exuberance of the Vaux-Withers design. In 1938, she rephotographed the courthouse, this time standing on Sixth Avenue and using a hand-held camera. Vacated by the courts in 1945, the courthouse was saved from demolition in 1967 and renovated as a branch of the New York Public Library.