Walkabout with Montrose: Terra Cotta Delights
Longtime Brownstoner community member and local architecture buff Montrose Morris (well, that’s her online name anyway) starts her regular column this week in praise of terra cotta. One of my favorite features of New York’s 19th and early 20th century architecture is the use of terra cotta and carved stone ornament. In Brooklyn, this ornament…
Longtime Brownstoner community member and local architecture buff Montrose Morris (well, that’s her online name anyway) starts her regular column this week in praise of terra cotta.
One of my favorite features of New York’s 19th and early 20th century architecture is the use of terra cotta and carved stone ornament. In Brooklyn, this ornament is everywhere. Terra cotta can be natural brick, limestone white, or glazed in brilliant colors.
Most of the terra cotta found in NYC was manufactured in Long Island City, Staten Island and New Jersey. Excellent public examples are BAM, the Montauk Club, and the Masonic Temple in Clinton Hill.
On our rowhouses, this fanciful ornament is seen in the corbels of a classic Italianate brownstone, and the ornate exuberance of the Queen Anne, Neo Gothic and Renaissance Revival styles. Portraits, animals, florals and Celtic knots abound.
Some are terra cotta, many in carved stone, all are made by anonymous carvers of great skill. After the Art Deco period, design sensibilities turned to stark Modernism. Many row houses lost their ornate facades, and many public buildings were torn down, their grotesques and foliate panels saved only by salvage companies and preservationists.
Fortunately, we’ve now come full circle, and these works of art are again appreciated for their beauty, and those buildings that feature them are being preserved for future generations. Explore your neighborhood, this art is all around you.
If you enjoy the examples above, please check out more examples in my Flickr set. All photos were taken in Crown Heights and Bed Stuy.
[Photos by Suzanne Spellen]
Lovely work MM! Thanks! 🙂
Thanks for the lovely feature. I really enjoyed the photos on Flikr.
One note: Many of the pictures are of carved limestone or brownstone. Within the same time period, you can find amazing carved stone and molded or carved terra cotta ornamentation. Sometimes it is tough to tell the difference. Usually with careful inspection it is possible to see the natural grain of the stone, which also may have some sparkle. Terra cotta is matte in appearance except if it is glazed and then it looks like ceramic tile.
B got MM a jobbie job. Congrats! The site is steering back in the right direction.
nothing is less durable than brownstone. it is perhaps the worst building material ever used in an industrialized city.
terra cotta lasts indefinetly if it is fired correctly. However in tall buildings and some houses, it is pinned back to the structure with iron anchors. They rust and cause havoc with the terra cotta. On most rowhouses the tc is used like a plain brick, it is just set in mortar with no metallic anchors. That is the manner it lasts the longest.
Nice work, Montrose!
DeLepp, the usual wander around. Many of the limestone and white brick house facades shown are on Dean St. between Nostrand and Brooklyn, some on Brooklyn Ave between Pacific and Eastern Parkway. The lion’s head with the foliate trim that is under a bay is on Park Place off Kingston, across the street from the much discussed mansion at 1094 Park Place. All of the really ornate Gothic looking facades on Flickr are on Park Place between Nostrand and New York.
Most of the brownstone brick terra cotta is in Bed Stuy, some in Stuy Hts, but also all over greater Bed Stuy. There are some great limestones there too, as well as brownstones and brick in Crown Heights.
MM,
WASDER obviously has first dibs, and, having seen his work, I know he’s an excellent photographer, but, if you need a second photographer….
MM, those terra cotta armies in xian were breathtaking. Is there a specific avenue in Crown heights I should concentrate on or should I just do the usual wander around?
You go girl!! Great post!