This post card is unusual for its close-up side view of the courthouse façade from Market Street around the time the building was completed. The post , which was unsent, has 1/3/06 scrawled on the front. 1906 was the year the courthouse was finished, although it was not formally dedicated until October 1907. Most portrayals of the courthouse show a full frontal view. My best guess for the reason the image was shot this way was because they did not wish to show the 1837 courthouse directly in front of the “new” courthouse, which may or may not have been under demolition.

The “new” courthouse, now known as the “historic” courthouse was designed by renowned architect Cass Gilbert. Gilbert designed a number of buildings in Newark including the National State Bank Building/ Hotel Indigo, the Kinney Building and the Gibraltar Building which now houses the Wilentz Justice Complex- New Jersey Superior Court.

Gilbert also designed the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. and the acclaimed Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan one of the earliest and most beautiful surviving skyscraper’s from that period.