Jury Duty Not ‘Hard Time’ To Serve In New Courthouse
By ROBERT HILFERTY
February 26, 2008
For the first time in my life, I could imagine actually looking forward to jury duty. Unlike those ponderous fortresses that typically shroud one’s civic obligation in gloom and doom, architect Rafael Viñoly’s Bronx County Hall of Justice, which opened its doors last month, epitomizes the notion of “innocent until proven guilty” — and doesn’t condemn the rest of us who must pass judgment. It is, perhaps, the least Kafkaesque courthouse in the city — a welcoming, translucent nine-story structure on 161st Street with a long, elegant façade of corrugated, green-tinted glass resembling Astor Piazzolla’s bandonéon.
Its project director, Fred Wilmers, called the courthouse “a metaphor for the transparency of the judicial system, the openness of government.” It is an apt description of this structure, with its street-level entrance and its exhilarating, light-filled lobby that’s not the least bit oppressive.
It’s an architectural (and a metaphorical) antidote to the concrete, bunker-style Bronx Family/Criminal Courthouse across the street, and it’s less intimidating than the Bronx County Courthouse a few blocks west, near Yankee Stadium. The new $421 million building, impressive but not imposing, takes on some of the criminal functions of its overextended neighbors.
You still have to pass through metal detectors and X-ray machines before gaining entry, but Mr. Viñoly’s idea of respect for the public above authority is delightfully successful. The centerpiece of the L-shaped configuration is the jury assembly room, a rotunda-like space that could hold 570 people in the center of the lobby. Skylights allow daylight to flood the space, which symbolically puts the juror at the center of the judicial process with dignity. What an idea.
After you are assigned a case, you can take an elevator to one of the four court-dedicated floors. Or you can stroll up the ramp that spirals around the rotunda to the second floor, offering a continuous view of the tree- and bench-dotted courtyard outside. It’s the designer’s stated hope that once this public plaza is opened later this year, the staff and local residents take their lunch breaks out there; a greenmarket has even been invited to camp out in this neighborhood-integrating social space, graced by a site-specific granite sculpture of interlocking cubes by Cai Guo-Qiang, who currently has a show at the Guggenheim.
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