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for larger version       Historical Views of the Rockaways
After incorporation into greater New York City, the old library building on the northeast corner of Beach 91 Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard served as a courthouse. In Far Rockaway, the playground on the south side of the firehouse once held the magistrates court, which was converted as such from the original Far Rockaway schoolhouse. As the space in all these places became limited, a new courthouse with holding cells was built on the south side of Beach Channel Drive, between Beach 90 and Beach 91 Streets. The beauty of the building was in its Greek revival architecture, made of granite, marble and sandstone. Operations at the new courthouse began in September of 1932, and in the following year, there were cries of a high caseload and a low budget. The Far Rockaway courthouse was torn down in 1946, and had been empty since all of the cases started going to the new place, and the courtrooms in the old library building on Beach 91 Street became office space. Then in 1962, a great centralization of the court system (to Jamaica, on Sutphin Boulevard, south of Hillside Avenue) closed the Rockaway courthouse for good, and ever since then, a new life for the building has been proposed several times, but it still remains closed.
Today's View is a postcard photograph of the big Rockaway Beach and Far Rockaway courthouse in the 1930's, when the place was fresh and new.
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