Main entrance to the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse at Foley Square in Manhattan, New York. Credit: Jack Pottle
Built in 1994, the KPF-designed federal courthouse will celebrate the milestone on September 17 with speeches by KPF President James von Klemperer as well as historians, judges, and academics.
The event honors the signing of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787, and will also include a discussion about enduring Constitutional legacies on the steps of the influential civic building. The Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse stands adjacent to Guy Lowell’s Municipal Courthouse of 1926 and across the street from Cass Gilbert’s United States Courthouse of 1936, creating a civic district in Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. The 27-story building accommodates a complex program in a high-rise form while engaging the public realm at ground level, including the nearby pedestrian-scaled public plaza surrounding Maya Lin’s Sounding Stones sculpture.
Jamie will discuss the design of the building, its urban presence in New York’s civic center, and its symbolic legacy, alongside Abby Suckle of cultureNOW and the Lower Manhattan Historical Association, Professor Kevin Arlyck of Georgetown Law, Seth Kaller of Historical Documents and Legacy Collections, the Honorable P. Kevin Castel, and the Honorable Laura Taylor Swain, Judges on the United States Southern District Court of New York. On display at the Moynihan Courthouse will be a rare print of the Constitution signed in New York before ratification. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, now operating out of the KPF-designed building, was the first court to convene after the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Organized by cultureNOW, the event is titled It Happened Here, referencing the historic political importance of “America’s Town Square,” or the Lower Manhattan area home to the Moynihan Courthouse. Learn more about the event and register to attend here.