Tweed Courthouse

In front of you rises an elegant white marble building with a Corinthian portico and a grand staircase. You would never guess it is the evidence of one of the biggest raids on public money in American history. Officially it is the old New York County Courthouse; everyone calls it after the man who turned it into his piggy bank: William M. Tweed.

1A project that never ended

Boss Tweed controlled Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine that ran the city. Construction began in 1861 and dragged on for twenty years. By 1871 some 11 million dollars had been spent, an outrageous sum for the time: the original budget had multiplied, and the real value of the work was estimated at far less.

The invoices were absurd: 133,000 dollars for two days' work on window frames, nearly 180,000 for three tables and forty chairs, and millions paid to a single plasterer, Andrew Garvey.

The courthouse took so long to build that when the time came to put Tweed on trial, it was still under construction.

2Cartoons and an escape to Spain

In 1871 The New York Times published the secret accounts, and the cartoonist Thomas Nast skewered him mercilessly in Harper's Weekly. Tweed was convicted, escaped in 1875 and fled to Cuba and then to Spain. He was arrested in Vigo and, as the story was told at the time, recognized from a Nast cartoon. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail in 1878.

3What to look for

• The Corinthian portico on Chambers Street, from John Kellum's first phase.
• The south wing, in a different style, added in the second phase by Leopold Eidlitz.
• City Hall, just to the south in the same park.