Ornamental Cornices

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the facades of many, if not most, residential and commercial buildings in America’s cities were crowned with sheet-metal cornices. These offered certain practical advantages over stone or brick cornices—for example, they were lighter and safer to install—but the easy workability of sheet metal also allowed for greater decorative possibilities. It was in the sheet-metal cornice, in fact, that the architectural eclecticism of the era found some of its most elaborate and impressive expression; in their complex play of geometric elements, of light and shadow, of multiple symmetries, the finest cornices can almost rival the ornament of a Gothic cathedral or a Moorish mosque. And of all the cities where these cornices were installed, New York may preserve the greatest number and variety—particularly in such Manhattan neighborhoods as Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Harlem. Henry C. Millman first became fascinated wit