Celebrating New York City Image 5

This is one of New York’s fabulous brick Rundbogenstil (German for round-arch style) buildings and home to Brooke Alexander Editions, publisher of prints and multiples. This monumental brick and granite warehouse, designed by Alfred Zucker and built in 1891, is decorated with carved heads and dragons. The main features of Rundbogenstil are arched windows that almost always have Venetian/Florentine tracery, inverted crenellations, or drops which are rows of small arches near the cornice, shallow gables, and thick quoins (on this building they are at the second floor level). 

Just as with Image 3 yesterday of my drawing "Soho at Wooster & Broome Sts," I saw this building as I walked north on Wooster Street. The rich terra-cotta color of the building made the beautifully carved heads, animals, rusticated stone (not smooth) and shadows stand out even more for me. The dragon in the center of my pen-and-ink drawing is an Ouroboros--a dragon swallowing its own tail.