Courthouse Place

{{About|an historic courthouse, now an office building|Cook County's present criminal court|Circuit Court of Cook County#Criminal Division}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}

{{Infobox NRHP

| name = Cook County Criminal Court Building

| nrhp_type =

| image = Chicago Criminal Courts Building, 54 West Hubbard Street, Chicago (Cook County, Illinois).jpg

| caption = The south (front) and east side of the building. Photo from the Historic American Buildings Survey. The now demolished jail cell blocks would have been to the right in this picture.

| designated_other1_name = Chicago Landmark

| designated_other1_date = June 9, 1993

| designated_other1_abbr = CL

| designated_other1_link = Chicago Landmark

| designated_other1_color = #aaccff

| location = 54 West Hubbard Street
Chicago, Illinois

| coordinates = {{coord|41|53|24.59|N|87|37|48.6|W|display=inline,title}}

| area =

| built = 1893

| architect = Otto H. Matz

| architecture = Romanesque

| added = November 13, 1984

| refnum = 84000281 {{NRISref|2007a}}

}}

Courthouse Place, also known as the former Cook County Criminal Court Building, is a Richardsonian Romanesque-style building at 54 West Hubbard Street in the Near North Side of Chicago. Now a commercial office building, it originally served as a noted courthouse. Designed by architect Otto H. Matz and completed in 1892 or 1893, it replaced and reused material from the earlier 1874 criminal courthouse at this site (the location of the trial and hangings related to the Haymarket Affair).{{cite web|url=https://chicagology.com/rebuilding/rebuilding033/|title=The Cook County Criminal Court and Jailhouse|author=|date=|website=Chicagology|accessdate=30 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230323072022/https://chicagology.com/rebuilding/rebuilding033/|archive-date=March 23, 2023}} The complex included, in addition to the successive courthouses, the cell blocks of the Cook County Jail, and a hanging gallows for prisoners sentenced to death. During the 1920s the attached jail (which was behind the courthouse but has since been demolished) housed almost twice its intended capacity of 1,200 inmates, and a shortage of court rooms led to a backlog of cases.{{Cite web |url=https://www.cookcountysheriff.org/cook-county-department-of-corrections/cook-county-jails-history/ |title=Cook County Jail's History |website=Cook County Sheriff's Office |language=en-US |access-date=2019-08-05}}

For its first 35 years, the present Courthouse Place building housed the Cook County Criminal Courts and was the site of many legendary trials, including Adolph Luetgert, Leopold and Loeb, the Black Sox Scandal, and the jazz age trials that formed the basis of the play and musical Chicago.{{Cite web |date=2016-04-21 |title=What’s That Building? The Old Cook County Court |url=https://www.wbez.org/stories/whats-that-building-the-old-cook-county-criminal-court/e08a8a68-ca14-4993-9d4e-f43078dc46c5 |access-date=2023-12-21 |website=WBEZ Chicago |language=en}} The 1928 play The Front Page was written by newspaper reporters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur based on the day-to-day events here. Other authors of Chicago's 1920s literary renaissance who were employed in the fourth floor pressroom include Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, and Vincent Starrett.{{cite web |url=https://www.friedmanproperties.com/portfolio/court-house-place|title= Court House Place – Chicago|author= |date= |website= Friedman Properties|publisher= |access-date= October 17, 2024|quote=}} It was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on November 13, 1984 with ID 8400028, and was labelled as significant in the areas of law, politics/government, and architecture, in the last quarter of the 1800s and the first quarter of the 1900s, especially 1892.{{Cite web |date=November 13, 1984 |title=NPGallery Asset Detail: Cook County Criminal Court Building |url=https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/84000281 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221224005431/https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/84000281 |archive-date=December 24, 2022 |access-date=October 10, 2023 |website=NPGallery Digital Asset Management System |series=National Register of Historic Places Collection |publisher=National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior |id=National Register Information System ID: 84000281, Asset IDs: 0a0dc5c4-8599-4d10-91c0-8a76957f35d8 and 1a1a2e8e-9ab2-4741-90c2-0984ea0a9a25}} It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 9, 1993.{{cite web|url=http://webapps1.cityofchicago.org/landmarksweb/web/landmarkdetails.htm?lanId=1283&counter=75|title=Courthouse Place |work=Chicago Landmarks |publisher=City of Chicago}}

In 1929, the Criminal Courts left the 54 West Hubbard Street location as did the Cook County Jail, and the building was then occupied by the Chicago Board of Health and other city agencies. After poor alterations and years of neglect, the building was acquired by a private developer, Friedman Properties, Ltd in 1985. The property was restored and refurbished as "Courthouse Place," an office development later expanded to include the restoration of other surrounding historic buildings.

North Market Hall was previously erected at the site in 1851 but burned in the Great Chicago Fire.{{Cite sign |title=431 N Dearborn St - Google Maps |date=August 2019 |url=https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8901608,-87.6296396,3a,15y,269.46h,86.67t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s-Z3p-mpQXMZYeB1ikrLOdg!2e0!5s20190801T000000!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu |publisher=Google Street View |location=North-west corner of N Dearborn St and W Hubbard St |medium=plaque on east wall of building |quote=North Market Hall Erected A.D. 1851 / Criminal Court Building [Erected A.D.] 1872 / Taken Down And Rebuilt [A.D.] 1892}}