Mae West on Sixth Avenue

Former City Council member Carol Greitzer remembered a Greenwich Village preservation battle during the early 1960s and referenced Mae West's legal woes there during the 1920s. Opening her opinion piece for The Villager, Greitzer said:
• • I was walking up Sixth Avenue, approaching the Jefferson Market Courthouse from the south. I looked upward, and even though I pass the site nearly every day, I was surprised anew both by the number of turrets and towers, and the variety of their sizes and shapes. I tried to put myself in the shoes of a tourist emerging from the subway or the PATH station. What a startling, but pleasant, experience it must be for them, expecting to see funky, trendy Greenwich Village, but instead encountering this apparently medieval castle incongruously set down inthe heart of the city.
• • This building is not only a unique landmark, but it’s one that has a special meaning for Villagers, because we saved it from demolition. What’s more significant — we did it before there was a Landmarks Preservation Law, five years before the existence of a Landmarks Preservation Commission!
• • The community reacted en masse and unanimously to the news that the New York Public Library wanted to tear down the empty, run-down building and construct a modern brick box that would provide the Village with a bigger library as a replacement for the small Jackson Square branch. ...
• • At any rate, we saved the [Jefferson Market Court House] building, which was magnificently restored by architect Giorgio Cavaglieri. I remember the tours of the premises with pigeons flying overhead in the big courtroom known famously as the scene of Mae West’s appearance for “obscenity.” . . . .
• • from "We saved the library once before; here we go again"
• • by Carol Greitzer
- - - excerpt from The Villager www.TheVillager.com - - -
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Mae West
Photo: Mae West 2 October 1928 after being arrested
Mae West.