Another restored stoop, with another nicely restored boot scraper:
This is a brick rowhouse, not a brownstone, but the original stoop and some facade ornament was brownstone, so of course it deteriorated and had to be worked on. Whatever coating was put over the stoop – I can’t tell whether that’s new stone below the coating, or brown stucco – is so thick and shiny that the steps looks almost like plastic. The restored metalwork is more successful, starting with that huge urn.
The handrail is mostly wrought iron, including the overall frame, the frame of each baluster, and the thin curling ornaments at the top of each baluster and between the upper and lower diagonals of the handrail proper. The baluster ornament – the up- and down-facing leaf patterns and the leaf-spirals-in-circles – is cast iron, as is the urn. The chain, which I’d like to believe is for a bicycle, but is more likely used to close off the stoop to prevent random sitters, is modern steel.
The boot-scraper is surprisingly high, at the third step, because of the stone base for the urn. It consists of the usual upturned wrought-iron blade mounted above the baluster bottom ornament, with foot room created by leaving out the down-turned leaf and the center circle and leaf-spiral. It occurs to me that the ease with which ornament was omitted to create the location for a boot scraper suggests that the ornament was designed with this variation in mind.
Part 1: here.
Part 2: here.
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