Funky Cornice With The Power To Impress
Drifting beyond our usual stomping grounds, we spotted this unusual oversized (wooden?) cornice at 39th Street and 4th Avenue. Viewed from the front, it adds grandeur and scale to an otherwise modest two-story building. This view from behind, however, shows what’s really going on. GMAP
Drifting beyond our usual stomping grounds, we spotted this unusual oversized (wooden?) cornice at 39th Street and 4th Avenue. Viewed from the front, it adds grandeur and scale to an otherwise modest two-story building. This view from behind, however, shows what’s really going on. GMAP
Maple Street, in LM, has two long rows of houses with cornices posing as sloped tile roofs:
http://tinyurl.com/kkflm
this is sunset park good area to look into right now.
11:25, Yeah, movie sets for westerns are all facade, but many of the actual buildings do have large facades, with a lower building. Here, if you look at the late 19th century commercial strips in the city, you’ll see a lot of this.
oh that’s the building with the worst domino’s store ever.
The sloped tile roof was a pretty common addition in the 1920s and 1930s. I can think of a few even in places like the Upper East Side Historic District. Often they are on the cornice above the storefront – Greenwich Village, for instance. Not sure if it was based on the spanish colonial styles that were fairly popular then or a mediterranean background of the owners.
This one is interesting because it retains its somewhat Italianate cornice with the mediterranean tile roof above. But even the cornice was probably removed and raised on the facade.
And just to mix things up, the pediment has a sort of carpenter Gothic feel, with the battens.
And the “Potemkin” extension of the facade is also not uncommon, but usually found on larger buildings.
Has the facade had one of those California stucco jobs done to it?
wait, aren’t you talking about stage sets?
Facades such as this are common in Dutch Architecture. Not sure if this applies to this example though…
It’s a time honored tradition, harkening back to our architecture’s European roots. Everyone always wants what shows to be impressive, even if we can’t back it up in reality.
I think the best examples of this are all of the buildings in the Old Western towns from countless movies and tv shows, where the facades are an entire story higher than the actual buildings. I’m sure the founding fathers of these towns wanted to impress newcomers, and tell them that their town had arrived and was successful – see how tall our buildings are!
Also made good places for sharpshooters in gunfights. Thank goodness not much of that anymore!