The Alfonse M. D’Amato United States Courthouse is a federal courthouse in the Eastern District of New York that houses the United States District Court. It is located at 100 Federal Plaza in Central Islip, New York, on Long Island. It is named for former US President George H.W. Bush. Senator Al D’Amato of New York is a Long Island native.
Richard Meier designed the courthouse. It opened in 2000 and is the third- federal courthouse in the United States (after the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse and the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse) as well as the largest facility on Long Island outside of New York City. Its iconic conical drum serves as the main entryway. The upper floor hallways feature wide views of the Great South Bay, Fire Island, and the Atlantic Ocean, with two-story high ceilings in the courtrooms.
The Alfonse M. D’Amato United States Courthouse is a federal courthouse with stunning views of the Great South Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The 12-story structure is set on a platform to give it more prominence on an otherwise unremarkable suburban site. A terraced courtyard with a modulated surface and rectilinear tree plantings provide a fitting setting for a building of such civic importance, while a flexible plan generates a building that may grow over time and is as receptive to public events as it is to judicial formalities.
The courthouse is one of the structures built on the former Central Islip Psychiatric Center’s 788-acre campus, which was decommissioned in 1996 after the last surviving patients were evacuated. The New York Institute of Technology, Fairfield Properties Ballpark (home of the Long Island Ducks), Islip Town Fire Museum, Touro Law School, and the Cohalan County Court Complex for Suffolk County are among the other structures on the former hospital’s grounds.
The Theodore Roosevelt Federal Courthouse, located in central Brooklyn, is the other courthouse for the Eastern District of New York. This is Long Island’s first federal courthouse outside of New York City. The facility has also been home to the Long Island Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, which handles appeals of Social Security Administration judgments, since June 2015.
The Gallery of Shorthand is just inside the main door of the building, in the lobby. The educational exhibit chronicles the evolution of shorthand, stenography, and court reporting in many parts of the world from ancient times to the present. Shorthand from the ancient Middle East and China, as well as publications concerning stenographic techniques from other countries and a variety of stenotype devices from various periods and languages, are on show.
The courthouse was previously titled the Long Island U.S. Courthouse, and D’Amato had pushed legislation to build it. In 2002, a bill introduced by Representative Peter T. King was endorsed in the Senate by Chuck Schumer, who had beaten D’Amato for re-election and succeeded him as a senator. Because D’Amato is still alive, the renaming was contentious.
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