The Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started was founded to do exactly what its name indicates. The Committee was also founded with the intention of sparking interest in preserving the Jefferson Market Courthouse structure as a whole.

December 1957: The Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started is formed

October 16, 1960: The Jefferson Market Courthouse Clock starts again

December 22, 1977: The Jefferson Market Courthouse is designated a National Historic Landmark

Margot Gayle, a Greenwich Village resident who lived in close proximity to the Jefferson Market Courthouse, was concerned with the fate of the building. The structure had ceased to be used as a courthouse in the 1940s and had subsequently been slated for demolition multiple times. At a Christmas party in 1957 amidst discussion of how to save the Jefferson Market Courthouse, Gayle, along with other residents, founded The Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started.¹ That night, the new committee sent Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. a telegram "asking that he rehabilitate the clock as a Christmas present to the Village.”² Over the course of the next few years, the Committee worked to raise the necessary money to start the clock. This work was accomplished through various grassroots campaigns such as the sale of Christmas cards with a local artist's representation of the courthouse.³ On October 16, 1960, the clock was started again, but this was not the end of the committee's work. The neighbors continued their work into the mid-1960s and focused on raising money to keep the clock running.⁴

The Committee of Neighbors to Get the Clock on Jefferson Market Courthouse Started was the starting point for the campaign to preserve the courthouse building. The clock was seen as "the perfect wedge issue" for the preservation campaign.⁵ Restoring the clock raised awareness of the building's situation among those in the area. After successfully restoring the clock, residents were more apt to restore the building as well. The same Village residents who fought for the clock led the battle for the conversion of the courthouse into a library in 1961.⁶

• Friends of Cast Iron Papers
  National Trust for Historic Preservation Library Collection
  University of Maryland
  College Park, MD 20742
  
  
• Margot Gayle Photo Collection
  New York Preservation Archive Project
  174 East 80^th Street
  New York, NY 10075
  Tel: (212) 988-8379
  Email: info@nypap.org
  
  
• Oral History with Margot Gayle
  Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation
  232 East 11^th Street
  New York, NY 10003
  Tel: (212) 475-9585
  Email: info@gvshp.org
  
  Charles Hosmer, Interview with Margot Gayle, under the auspices of the Eastern National Park and Monument Association, 23 June 1982. University of Maryland Libraries Collection.
  
  Oral History with with Margot Gayle (available upon request)
• New York Preservation Archive Project
  174 East 80^th Street
  New York, NY 10075
  Tel: (212) 988-8379
  Email: info@nypap.org