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 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]