Brennan (William J.) Hudson County Courthouse
575-583 Newark Avenue at Newark, Baldwin and Pavonia Avenues and Willow Court
National Register of Historic Places

Hudson County Administration Building (595 Newark Avenue)
Photo: P. Shalhoub, 2002

Designed by Hugh Roberts, a resident of Jersey City, the Hudson County Courthouse opened on September 10, 1910, as the seat of the Hudson County judicial system. Roberts was the brother-in-law of Hudson County attorney William D. Edwards and of US Senator and New Jersey Governor Edward I. Edwards. The construction companies of Well Bros. and John Gill & Sons completed the beaux-arts or "Modern Renaissance" style courthouse for $3.3 million.

Similar to Italian Renaissance palaces, the six-story exterior of the courthouse is noted for its granite walls, bronze window frames and doors, Corinthian columns, and low flat copper dome with the torch of victory. The interior design and ornamentation received as much attention from Francis D. Millet, the director of decoration for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Eight columns of Italian green marble dramatically rise from the second to the fourth floor in the center of the building forming an interior court covered by a dome. Scenes of the zodiac surround the rotunda with a dome of stained class. Architectural historian Suzanne Hand remarks that the structure's great rotunda "with its rich materials, columns, balustrades, arches and dome shows the sumptuousness of Neoclassical Revival design" (79).

The works of muralists Edwin H. Blashfield, Charles Yardley Turner, Kenyon Cox and Howard Pyle are seen throughout the building. They depict the history of Hudson County, such as The Coming of the English by Pyle seen in the Hudson County Freeholders' Assembly Chamber. The four major courtrooms on the top floor are each designed in a classic style conveying the majesty of the law.

In 1966, a modern Hudson County Administration Building was opened to replace the "old court house" that was to be razed. However, in the mid-1970s, a successful campaign to save the courthouse resulted in the restoration of the building that reopened in 1985 for use in civil cases. The restoration program received a preservation award from the Victorian Society of America in 1988.

The following year, Hudson County Board of Chosen Freeholders renamed the building for William J. Brennan, Jr. He was born in Newark in 1906 and graduated Harvard Law School in 1931. Justice Brennan was nominated by Governor Alfred E. Driscoll to a judgeship on the New Jersey Superior Court and served as Hudson's County's assignment judge from 1949 to 1951. He succeeded to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court in 1952 and was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as an Associate Justice to the US Supreme Court in 1956, where he served until 1990.

In 2001, the "new" Brennan Center for Justice opened at the New York University School of Law.

Reference:
Hand, Suzanne C. The New Jersey Architect. Trenton, NJ: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1995.
Brennan Center for Justice. http://www.brennancenter.org