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.
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.
posted by Michael at
10:51 PM
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