Former Eleventh Judicial District Courthouse (Now American Theater of Actors/The Children's Museum of Manhattan)

History and architecture

The former Eleventh Judicial District Courthouse, one of the few remaining nineteenth-century public buildings in the western portion of Midtown, and one of only three district courthouse buildings of that era extant in Manhattan, was designed by architect John H. Duncan and built in 1894-96 by the City of New York to house both the Eleventh District Municipal Court and the Seventh District Magistrates' Court. The courthouse, one of Duncan's few extant public buildings, was contemporaneous with his best-known commissions, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch and the General Grant National Memorial.

The courthouse is a significant example of Duncan's institutional work during a period when his work achieved wide recognition and demonstrates his ability to skillfully employ the Renaissance Revival style in a small civic structure. The iconography of the terra-cotta detailing, incorporating symbols of justice and the City of New York, helps to identify the original function of the building. Authorized by legislation introduced by West Side Tammany "boss George W.

Plunkitt, the facility was popularly known as the "West Side Court"; the legal proceedings that occurred in the courthouse played an integral role in the social history of the heavily populated West Side of Manhattan.