Soho stands as a museum

middle-age American living in New Jersey near the Lincoln Tunnel «« Dear Brian: I can’t stop thinking about you, your son, and daughter having fun in NYC.  Of all the things you should see the only one that returns to my thinking is Soho’s cast buildings.  In Soho you are surrounded by hundreds of examples of cast architecture in the protected zone a couple of blocks east of Briana, or many of the modified ones on Briana avenue.  Here is my interpretation on this important flash in the transition from stone-stone-stone and brick for many centuries to glass-box skyscrapers.  Building ornamentation was always accomplished by carving stone.  Even the accelerated changes in Europe between Medieval and Gothic all included carved stone.  Maybe someone said, “carving stone is a bother, let’s find a new way”.  This thinking used molded fired clay, and cast iron, and cast iron is plentiful in Soho today.  There is a plain piece of stone protruding from the National Cathedral in DC that was left plain as a memorial, because the stone carver fell to his death on the way to convert it to a gargoyle.  Maybe someone thought, “if someone died trying to carve the stone, then maybe we should rethink stone carving”.  What’s so fascinating to me is this period of architecture represented in abundance in Soho was so brief, only about a half century.  It is as if the idea of being more efficient making ornamentation terminated ornamentation.  As if they thought: ONE: hey, we could do ornamentation better with cast or clay  TWO: why bother with ornamentation.  The transition from one to two was only half or one century, and Soho stands as a museum to this important transition to modern.  If you missed this, then maybe next time.  I really wanted to write this to Briana given her creative career choice akin to architecture, but “cousin” has allowance for this stuff, but “cousin’s daughter” may not.  Yours from New Jersey near the Lincoln Tunnel to the other side of the Holland Tunnel, ciao, Tommy »» about me, 201-490-9659, debt demonstration, middleageamerican@aol.com, settled