Franklin County Justice Center / Photos © Brad Feinknopf
Greenfield, MA – Leers Weinzapfel Associates recently completed the Franklin County Justice Center in Greenfield, the latest in a series of the firm’s award-winning courthouses and civic structures.
The 109,080sf, $66 million project combines the renovation of the 1930s Franklin County Courthouse with a new addition.
The project’s design restores the front of the original brick courthouse for use by the clerk and probation departments. Modern functional requirements for evolving use necessitated a reconfiguration and renovation of the structure that reduced it from 44,352 to 26,136sf, but its historical sensibility is maintained through careful preservation of signature elements.
Inside courthouse
Original lighting fixtures, millwork, and building carvings were restored and relocated to significant locales in the structure. The much larger 82,944sf addition behind it houses a new entry, six courtrooms, a law library, detainee circulation, and a jury pool room.
Despite its size, the addition does not overwhelm the scale of the existing building. The elements above the historic structure’s cornice are light and ephemeral, reflecting the sky. The glazed top floor sits above a three-story masonry block, made of the same limestone as the base of the original courthouse.
Courthouse entrance
The entry was relocated from Main Street to the side where the old and new buildings converge to provide accessibility and address circulation and wayfinding. An extended roof canopy and glass wall frame the new entry and public zone of the courthouse.
The project will receive LEED Silver certification.
“The initial challenge was to design a large modern courthouse in the smaller scale context of Greenfield,” says Leers Weinzapfel Principal Josiah Stevenson. “By restoring the historic front, we maintained the town scale, and we worked to make the large addition an appropriate scale as well.
“One key to this project was the combination of the existing historic courthouse and the new addition,” says DCAMM Commissioner Carol Gladstone.
