The New York Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village, after opening in 1932. The

The New York Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village, after opening in 1932.

The House of Detention was built on the site of the former Jefferson Market Prison – named for the Jefferson Market that had previously occupied the site – on 6th Ave & Greenwich, next to the 1877 romanesque Jefferson Market Courthouse. Labeled as the world’s only Art Deco courthouse - a monument to Modern penology, the twelve story structure was designed by architects Sloan & Robertson (Chanin and Fred French Buildings) to look more like an apartment building than a jail. The busy corner gave the jail notoriety, as women would often communicate with pedestrians on the street below.

Author and journalist Tom Wolfe wrote about the scene outside the jail in sixties when conditions were quickly deteriorating,
“The girls, these Sirens, these Voices, are all up in the cellblocks of the Women’s House of Detention, 10 Greenwich Avenue, overlooking Village Square, and, well, what the ——, as the girls like to say, these yelling games are something to do. The percentages are in their favor….The Women’s House of Detention is, no doubt, a ‘hellhole,’ as even the Corrections Department people speak of it every time they ask for an appropriation to build a bigger one…Yet there is probably not another large prison in the country that is in such intimate contact with the outside world… I would often hear the inmates, who were right above the streets, yelling out the window. One of the things they liked to do most was yell a boy’s name, and then if somebody who happened to be walking by had that name he would look up and they would shower abuse on him.”

The courthouse nextdoor faced demolition but was luckily saved and today is a branch of the New York Public Library. The House of Detention was demolished in 1974 and replaced with the current garden that occupies the site. (at Jefferson Market Garden)
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