The Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, a granite and limestone behemoth that towers over a city block between Canal Street and the Brooklyn Bridge, is no stranger to history.
It is where Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to murdering John Lennon and Bernhard Goetz was arraigned for shooting four Black men on the New York City subway — and, 26 years later, on misdemeanor drug charges. It is where the comedian Lenny Bruce faced obscenity charges in 1964 and, more recently, where Anna Sorokin faced grand larceny charges for posing as a German heiress to swindle wealthy New Yorkers.
It is where a group of Black and Latino teenagers, then known as the Central Park Five, were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger — a conviction Donald J. Trump cheered on — and exonerated more than a decade later. And now, it is where Mr. Trump himself is making his first appearance as a criminal defendant.
The courthouse sits at 100 Centre Street, at the northern end of a judicial complex that also includes the New York County Supreme Court (for state civil and appellate cases) and the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse (for federal cases). Formally known as the Criminal Courts Building, it was constructed from 1938 to 1941 in the Art Deco style and houses courtrooms; the Manhattan district attorney’s office; and police, correction, probation and legal aid offices.
It is the epicenter of Manhattan’s criminal justice system: the place where defendants charged with everything from shoplifting to murder are indicted, arraigned and tried. Unlike Mr. Trump, most of the thousands of people churned through it — guilty and innocent — will never be known to the world.
