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]
Totally cool stuff, give us more.
well done MM!
What a lovely feature! This is also an ingenious way to share the history of each neighborhood up close and personal, especially those hoods unfamiliar to some of us.
Mea culpa again on the outing (and to have it magnified in the NYT — yeesh). Great post Montrose. My daughter was in a little after school architecture club several years back (1st-4th graders) and when we went out to take pictures of architecture she liked, it was mostly arches and terra cotta around Carroll and Montgomery near the Park in PS. Great stuff. Now, after all our renovations, she’s just sick of house talk, but I’m hoping the foundation is still there, so to speak.
“We encouraged MM to limit the column to a couple of paragraphs…Do you guys think it should be longer?”
Yes, longer please.
MM, this is terrific. When are you doing the walking tour?
Mr B, give MM all the space she wants.
Tiptoe, Montrose Morris was one of Brooklyn’s finest late Victorian architects. Some of his best works are in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights. I’ve lived in both communities for a long time, and taking his name as my “nom de plume” was a way to honor his work, as well as those communities.
I didn’t get outed as a woman until showing up at a Brownstoner gathering. Up until that time, I had kept my postings gender neutral, and I had the fun of surprising quite a few people. Monty will be the topic of a column at some point. He was an interesting man, and quite talented.
MM, I’m hoping you are getting how happy you have made so many to see this new role you are taken with Brownstoner! What a journey, my sister– from public ridicule and derision to wide public embrace and praise. You go! I’m totally loving your first column and I expect that it will only get better over time. (The suggestion to team up with Wasder sounds fantastic!) Thank you, Jon. And double thanks, MM, for adding some much relevant, lay-accessible architectural substance to our daily diet of brownstoner.com!
“We encouraged MM to limit the column to a couple of paragraphs…Do you guys think it should be longer?”
Mr. B, I would suggest you make it like the Inside Third & Bond Thread whereby you have a couple of paragraphs on the Front Page and the rest of the write up when one clicks on the link. I, for one, would like to read MM’s expanded write-up.