43-45 East 2nd Street; 32-34 Second Avenue | Block : 443 | Lot #8

Description & Building Alterations

This capacious brick building was erected from 1917 to 1919 to host the magistrate court. The City of New York Board of City Magistrates hired architect Alfred Hopkins to design the Renaissance Revival structure. The building was originally conceived in 1913 as a 14-story “skyscraper type” structure, though the plans were significantly scaled back in Hopkin’s 1917 redesign, which resulted in the existing 3-story structure. Only three stories but 46′ high, the building is decorated by various brick patterns. A cornice runs around the building between the lower two stories, and the upper story is topped by a tall and well detailed cornice. The tall arched windows in recess of the facade are framed by decorative terra cotta and masonry in progressive recess. Some windows have been narrowed and partially filled with bricks. This may be a result of the change in occupancy.

After 1948, the building was known as the Lower Manhattan Magistrate’s Courthouse. The Film Project, established by St. Mark’s in 1966 and whose first director was Ken Jacobs, moved to this location and renamed itself the Millennium Film Workshop. It moved out two years later in 1969 to its permanent home at 66 East Fourth Street. In 1979, Anthology Film Archives, founded in 1969 by Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Jerome Hill, Stan Brakhage, and Peter Kubelka bought the building. The organization sought to exhibit and preserve experimental and avant-garde films, and to publish film reference books. The new owners of this building undertook several alterations designed by Raimund Abraham and Kevin Bone were made to adaptively reuse the building. In 2017 a rooftop and side addition were approved at this location by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, click HERE.