The Jefferson Market Library is an iconic building in Greenwich Village. Located at 6th Avenue and 10th street, the building is known for its bright red brick exterior, gothic windows, charming (and public!) garden, and its 11-story high clock tower. But what is most likely not known is the fascinating history of this building, and the many times it was saved from destruction by a team of active Village residents, led by one Margot Gayle.

The building was originally a wooden firehouse, built in the early 1800s with a tall tower that overlooked Manhattan and kept watch for fires, invasions, and any other threat to the city. In 1875 the wooden structure was torn down, and a brick courthouse was erected, complete with a brick tower that included a 4-sided clock, added to continue to keep watch over the city.

In 1945 the city ceased to use the building, and it sat empty for over 10 years. Eventually the clock – nicknamed “Old Jeff” – stopped running, and the city began to talk about tearing down the whole structure. That is when Margot Gayle and her Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started (which is a fairly long name with sadly no chance of a catchy acronym) stepped in. They began to petition the city to restore the clock and save the building. While the city refused to do anything on their own, they did allow the committee to take over. Gayle’s committee rented the tower from the city for $1 a month, and hired a repairman to fix and maintain the clock. In 1961 the city commissioned the courthouse to become a branch of the New York Public Library, and the Committee worked to transfer ownership and repair of the clock over to the NYPL. After another threat of closure and destruction in the 1970s, the building was declared a historic landmark, and has been in active use as a library since.

We recently came across a great, brief interview with Margot Gayle about her Committee and the clock they worked to save. In the interview from the 1960s (though the actual date is unknown), she gives a brief history of the courthouse and clock, what the Committee has done so far, and her thoughts on the transition of the space into a library.  Ms. Gayle, who died 6 years ago last week, was a prominent and outspoken conservationist in the Village, working throughout the 1950s and 1960s to not only preserve historic buildings, but to give them a new life in the modern New York City. When fixing the clock, she noted the importance it plays in the daily life of all people in the neighborhood, “children have gone to school by it, people catch their bus, get off to work by it, come home and find out if stores are still open by it…” Fixing the clock meant providing structure to the surrounding community.

Margot Gayle’s work is still present in today’s Greenwich Village.  In the 1960s she helped to successfully lobby for a landmark preservation law to help secure buildings after the destruction of the original Pennsylvania Station. She also worked to prevent the construction of a highway in downtown Manhattan. And of course, she went on to help save many more clocks all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.