CityRealty Insider > Gargoyles: Faces in the Architecture

Gargoyles: Faces in the Architecture

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

If you look up, you may catch the eye of a gargoyle looking down at you.

Gargoyles were first created as useful additions—functioning as rainwater spouts—as well as architectural flourishes in the 12th and 13the centuries. The grizzled characters came back into favor during Victorian England in the 19th Century with Neo-Gothic architecture, and many later styles like Art Deco and Beaux-Arts used them as ornamentation as well. In New York City, the blocks along Central Park West are great for gargoyle-spotting, as is the downtown Neo-Gothic Woolworth Building. The photo site Gargoyles of New York provides a good visual sampling.

More Deco than Gothic, the sleek eagles that line the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building made a dramatic backdrop (story via Smithsonian Magazine) for photographers Margaret Bourke-White (for a feature in Life magazine) and Annie Liebovitz (for a New York Times article ). On a less famous scale, the Brittania condominium at 527 West 110th Street in Morningside Heights has its gargoyles to thank for its being known to neighbors and city historians as the “chicken soup building” (via The Weblicist).

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