Surrogate's Courthouse

The Surrogate's Courthouse stands as a monumental example of the City Beautiful movement, an early twentieth-century design philosophy that aimed to uplift the public through grand, classical architecture. Completed in 1907, the seven-story granite structure was originally built to serve as the city's Hall of Records. Architects intended the steel-framed building to be a fortress for history, utilizing fireproof construction to protect the thousands of vital municipal documents housed within its walls. The building's exterior is adorned with fifty-four distinct sculptures by artists Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, which rise nearly one hundred and fifty feet above the sidewalk.