90. Building at 254-260 Canal Street

A.K.A.: The Bruce Building
Location: 254-260 Canal Street
Built: 1856-1857
Architect: Probably James Bogardus
National Register Number: 06000475
Listed: June 07, 2006
Visited: November 15, 2008



254-260 Canal Street is also known as the Bruce Building, the Bruce here being George Bruce. The National Register of Historic Places registration form quotes a source calling him the "'father and chief' of typography in America." Not being in the field, I suppose I can't bring his publishing innovations to a height lower than a little over my head, but I do "get" the utility and beauty of the typefaces his foundry birthed, including Ornamented No. 1514 a.k.a. Gold Rush a.k.a. Klondike, a type I had to fake when designing one of my just-about-dead blogs.



Of the thirty-seven buildings known to be or suspected to have been designed by cast-iron pioneer James Bogardus, only five survive. Of the remaining five, the Bruce Building is closer to "suspected" than "known," as we have no direct proof of Bogardus' involvement; however, Bogardus did list Bruce as a client a year after this building was completed, and the Medusa heads topping the fourth-story arches are known to be characteristic of his work. I think it's also possible there's significance in Bruce's background, as several of James Bogardus' largest known works were built for publishers, including the Sun Iron Building and the Harper & Brothers Publishing Plant; perhaps it was thought of as a minor specialty of Bogardus. It's not much of a stretch to imagine the intuitive appeal a cast-iron building might have to someone who works with movable type, as both the printed page and something like the façade of 254-260 Canal Street are the fruits of individual pre-fabricated metal parts that can be mixed 'n' matched in infinite permutations.

69. Building at 85 Leonard Street

A.K.A.: The Bogardus Building; Kitchen, Montross & Wilcox Store
Location: 85 Leonard Street
Built: 1860-61
Architect: James Bogardus
National Register Number: 80002675
Listed: April 23, 1980
Visited: May 18 and 21, 2008



James Bogardus' cast-iron façade for 75 Murray Street partitions floor from floor and window from window using thick and gooey detailing. His work for 85 Leonard, built only a few years later, is an altogether different expression. Designed in the "sperm-candle" style popular in its day, it has long above-ground columns that straddle two stories, and restrained spandrel panels separating unusually wide windows. These details emphasize continuity rather then segmentation--as well as verticality, in what was perhaps a reflection of an embryonic building-height arms race.

As you can see from the photo, 85's neighbors on Leonard also partake in the sperm-candle style. Even though they're done in brick and stone rather than iron, together they create a continuous stretch of architectural forms as pleasuable as any townhouse row in Greenwich Village.

63. 75 Murray Street Building

A.K.A.: Hopkins Store
Location: 75 Murray Street
Built: 1857
Architect: James Bogardus
National Register Number: 73001213
Listed: April 3, 1973
Visited: April 13, 2008



As I snake my way towards Soho this spring and summer, this blog will be covering many examples of this neighborhood's signature architectural mode, the cast-iron building. James Bogardus is considered its daddy, but for all his importance, few of his buildings survive. Of those that do, only some can be definitively identified as being one of his babies. A building permit is a good source of this kind of information, but the systematic regulation and monitoring of building construction in the city really starts with the establishment of Manhattan's Department of Buildings in 1866, by which time cast-iron architecture as a fashion was already at its peak. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the building, authored in 1968, doesn't even mention Bogardus, and the third edition of AIA Guide to New York City doesn't identify 75 Murray as being his.



So how do we know it's a Bogardus? Christopher Gray relates the story in a 1994 Streetscapes column of how one day in 1980, the paint on the steps flaked off enough to reveal Bogardus' foundry mark. Prior to that, historian Margot Gayle had well-deduced suspicions in the early '70s based on its similarities to other works known to be by Bogardus.



One similarity is the Medusa-head keystones, also used in Bogardus' ill-fated Laing Stores. To protect homes from the entrance of evil, the Greeks sometimes used the figure of Medusa's terrible gaze to protect objects, including the "eyes" of buildings, its windows and doors. Like Oswald Wirz' Green Men and countless gargoyles everywhere, the Medusas are another pagan relic popping up in the middle of a New York steeped in the Abrahamic religions. Then again, so are the building's columns--much of what the West has borrowed from Greek Architecture comes from surviving temples like the Parthenon.