Word: cottas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...stately brick and terra-cotta building with vaulting four-story window arches represents a quintessentially New York City phenomenon: the architectural landmark that nobody notices. Built in the 1890s on a fashionable corner in Greenwich Village, it was designed for a long-forgotten retailer who dreamed of giving Macy's a run for its money. Passersby would probably not be surprised if the structure disappeared overnight to be replaced with a modern apartment tower. They would never guess that this venerable edifice is the most energy-efficient building in Manhattan...
Given the high finish of his marbles, the roughness of his terra-cotta models comes as a surprise. In the first heat of exploring a motif, Canova worked as quickly and directly, almost, as Rodin, squeezing and knifing the clay to slab out the shapes. On occasions, he could compress a remarkable charge of emotion into these little studies: in one of them, the curve of the long neck of Antigone weeping over her dead brothers has much the same shape and, in miniature, some of the same tragic force as the woman's head in Picasso's Guernica...
...good-size but hardly expansive. The interior is lucid and properly restrained. It is, in Venturi's famous phrase, a "decorated shed." Around the front doors, the facade is a riot of color, pattern and material: red granite topped by green, blue and yellow tiles, zigzags of terra cotta, bluestone squares and vaguely Moorish arches in sandstone. A grand staircase runs the length of the building, paralleling the street outside; in fact, the stairs become something of an interior street, giving on to an open-front mezzanine cafe three-quarters...
Most perplexing of all was the terra-cotta bath scrubber, a $5 cookie-shaped object with the texture of a cheese grater. Its purpose is to scrub off skin flakes. This object seemed to symbolize the Origins mentality: "Look at me! I'm mortifying my flesh even though I'm also indulging in expensive toiletries!" Maybe the bath scrubber would make a good gift for your favorite ascetic, but a real cheese grater would work just as well--and be more useful around the house...
...hall's century-old Roman brick and terra cotta are suggested on the tower by a skin of brownish and amber brick in five shades, and the molding and cornice lines of Carnegie's beaux arts facade are continued across the front of Pelli's building. The high-rise is wrapped by thick metal bands at six-floor intervals corresponding to the older building's height...