A random find at the NYPL, the cast-iron facade of the Ridley Building, by the Jackson Iron Works:
I love the whole thing, but especially the corner dome. Looking at the field of the walls – either the brick wall on the left or the iron wall on the right – make it clear this is basically a loft building, but who says that a loft building can’t be exuberantly[1] ornamental? I know of Jackson Iron Works as one of the cast-iron foundries in New York that built a lot of facades, but I don’t really keep track of individual buildings from different iron works, because that way lies madness.
A very small amount of poking around got to the “Ridley Building” being the Edward Ridley & Sons department store, and we’re looking at the corner of Grand And Orchard Streets on the Lower East Side. The building was constructed in 1886, well after the end of the cast-iron boom, and the department store went out of business in 1901, but the building is still there and was designated as a landmark in 2012. It turns out that the caption is a bit misleading: the building’s architect was Paul Schoen, and William Shears was the builder. It is entirely possible that the design of the exterior cast iron was handled by Shears. Interestingly, the designation report from the Landmarks Preservation Commission says “No historic photograph of the 1886 addition has been found but an 1886 illustration indicates that the center section of the dome, like Snook’s earlier tower, may have incorporated a clock, set within a pedimented frame.” The NYPL seems to have found a photo, and maybe that circular thing is a clock.
The dome didn’t last all that long. Here’s the 1940 tax photo of the corner:
And the somewhat depressing, despite the cheery color, designation photo of the corner:
- The first APTI conference I went to, 1995 maybe, was in Chicago and had Morris Lapidus as a keynote speaker. He was fantastic. After talking about his Beaux Arts training, he described how he got his first design all by himself, a small storefront for, if I recall properly, a shoe store. After making it clear how small the store was and how important it was to his hopes for his career, he then said “And I thought, why not do something kooky?”↩︎
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