A Pretty But Pointless End

That’s the post office at Canal and Church Streets, shoring off its terra cotta facades. It’s a nice facade, sort of at the extreme “stripped” end of the “stripped classical” style, and the bright color is not a problem on a street as busy and wide as Canal. It was built in 1937 and is not a city landmark but is on the National Register. (The register nomination refers to the style as Moderne, but I’m not so sure. The proportions of the facade are perfect beaux arts, just missing all the ornament.)

There wasn’t much construction in New York between 1930 and 1945 as a result of the Depression and World War II, and even less big-building construction. By 1937, the game was just about over for facades entirely covered with terra cotta veneer. It continued to show up as trim and ornament in brick facades for a while longer, but the combination of simpler designs, metal panels, and more glass as international-style modernism became popular when construction sped up in the late 40s and 50s was enough to end the city’s terra cotta era. It started in the 1880s, gained speed after 1900, and peaked figuratively and literally with the Woolworth Building’s all terra cotta facade in 1911.

The Canal Street post office shows one of the main reasons that terra cotta was on the way out. There are cheaper and easier ways to make flat facades, and the style of this building involves mostly flat panels. Terra cotta is one of the least expensive ways to make a lot of unique and complex ornament, but that’s exactly what this style has eliminated, except in the dark red frames around the doors and windows and the narrow frieze at the top. For all of the effort that went into the terra cotta, it wasn’t really needed.