In 1979, the Municipal Archives learned that 23 Park Row, its home for the previous decade, had been sold and would have to be vacated—pronto. Although space in the Surrogate’s Courthouse at 31 Chambers Street had been secured for the Department of Records and Information Services, including the Archives, the necessary renovations were not completed. The solution: move the collections to the “Tweed” Courthouse. It took just a few days in July 1979 for movers to squeeze just about everything maintained at 23 Park Row—all the cartons, maps, ledgers, and the 8,000 Brooklyn Bridge drawings—into several former court rooms on the third floor at Tweed.  

Almost from the day it opened in 1878, there had been calls for demolition of the Tweed building. Detractors decried it as a too-visible monument to the legendary corrupt “Boss” Tweed or claimed that it overwhelmed the relatively diminutive City Hall. In 1974, only a few years before the Archives residency in the building, a mayoral task force recommended that Tweed be torn down and “replaced with a modest office structure of design compatible with City Hall.”    

This week, For the Record looks at one of these periodic attempts to demolish the structure, this time from the powerful Robert Moses. Recently discovered correspondence in the Archives’ Department of Parks collection documents Moses’ actions in the late 1930s to make Tweed disappear.    

“Please prepare a letter to the Mayor and Board of Estimate on the matter of removing the County Courthouse from City Hall Park…,” wrote Parks Commissioner Robert Moses to George Spargo, one of his deputies, on June 6, 1939. Spargo, as instructed, dutifully drafted a letter, dated June 13, 1939. He got right to the point: “In preparing the 1940 Capital Outlay Budget, we are including a request for the completion of the work at City Hall Park, which brings up the question of the disposition of the Tweed Court House north of City Hall. It is obvious that this should be demolished and the land restored to park use.”  

It is not clear whether Moses sent the letter to Mayor LaGuardia. A penciled notation on the draft said “Hold for plan from Davison.” About a month later, on July 12, 1939, Spargo informed Moses in a memo that “…they won’t be able to start construction [of the new Criminal Courts Building at Foley Square] until 1941. This means that we won’t get the old building out of City Hall Park until 1942.”   

Moses decided he needed additional support for the plan to remove the Tweed building. Using his apparently unlimited budget for promotional materials he prepared an illustrated six-page pamphlet to plead his case. In the first two pages, Moses reproduced a letter to the Mayor. Dated September 18, 1939, it considerably embellished Spargo’s earlier draft. The first paragraph described his overall plan for City Hall Park: “With the completion of the southerly portion of City Hall Park formerly occupied by the old post office building and the removal of the fence around it, the first step will have been taken in restoring this park to the public and in providing an appropriate setting for one of the finest bits of architecture in New York City.” (A recent For the Record article described the saga of the Old Post Office, Bring the 5M With You--Two Eagles and a Post-Office.)  

Moses continued: “The only blot on the landscape which will remain at the end of 1940 if these funds are appropriated, will be the so-called “Tweed” court house. This ugly and obsolete building, a monument to Boss Tweed and Tammany became notorious because of the extravagance and graft linked with its construction. All those interested in the city and its parks are agreed that City Hall ought to be the only building in the park and the department’s plans have been drawn accordingly. The difficulty has always been finding a site for a new court house to take the place of the Tweed building.”  

Moses’ letter went on to describe how Foley Square would serve as the desired alternate site. The pamphlet included an artistic rendering, and a site plan of City Hall Park, minus Tweed. Moses directed Spargo to have 1,000 copies of the pamphlet printed “by the off-set process” for distribution to decision-makers and the press.  

Part of Moses’ plan did come to fruition—a new courthouse, the criminal courts building, opened in 1941 at Foley Square, but somehow Tweed remained. Moses did not give up. In May 1941, he wrote to Benjamin Spellman, a representative of the New York County Lawyers’ Association thanking him for his support for removal of Tweed: “From time to time I have discussed this matter with the Mayor because we are very anxious to get rid of the old Tweed Court House...”.  There was not further correspondence on the subject and apparently Moses abandoned his plan. 

The Municipal Archives remained in Tweed until renovations at 31 Chambers Street were completed in 1984. For the Record related the story of the Archives’ time at the infamous Courthouse in Farewell to Tweed. Although Tweed survived Moses’ attempt to pull it down, that was not  the last time it faced demolition. Look for future articles to continue the story of one of New York City’s most remarkable buildings.