Photo below; Cleaned of both glossy black and gold paint applied to the lion at some point in it's history, what is left is black coal soot and staining from air pollution, acid rain. The coal soot was a major problem in the coal days turning entire facades black quickly. The staining is as permanent as it gets- almost nothing removes it short of sandblasting or one chemical I know of, BUT, one does NOT want to remove this because this is part of the sculpture's natural patina from age/exposure the same way copper and bronze turn green.
Misguided people who wind up with ornaments like these intending to put them in the garden usually do two very damaging things to them- one is laying them flat on the ground face up, this collects water which can freeze and crack. The other is painting or excessive harsh or abrasive cleaning to make them look new, both of these are extremely bad and destroys the natural patina, especially in the case of sandblasting which is THE worst thing anyone can do.
Why someone would want a 100 year old antique to look NEW is beyond me
A very nice parapet cornice artifact salvaged from the Corn exchange national bank NW corner of LaSalle and West Adams, 122-136 S LaSalle St, Chicago. Erected in 1908, designed by Shepley, Reutan and Coolege of Boston.
Oddly enough it seems somewhat modern-contemporary in it's modelling. This was up on what would have been around the 17th floor.
The right side bottom and top are intact, the left side was obviously chopped away long ago, no doubt the block this was part of was about 2 or 3 feet wide with the lion head situated on the right side of it rather than the center, the left portion was probably chopped away to lessen the weight or the demolition guys jackhammered the main piece out of the rest.
With some research and a hunch, I found the bank building he came from in the book "Common Clay, a history of American Terra Cotta Corporation 1881-1966" on a page that reproduced one of their newsletters. The 17 story 1908 bank by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, Boston- was shown as a "Distinctive building" which appeared to be a monthly feature page for a full page photo. The archtect firm took over the well known Henry H Richardson's practice when he died and completed a bunch of his pending projects. Shadyside Presbyterian Church is one this firm designed that I know of.
The building was also used in color postcards circa 1914, same view as the newsletter from a window of a building across the street, but a floor or two higher up.
The lions can only be seen as shaped bumps in the photo, but there were 7 of them on the one side, and around 15-20 more on the longer facade. The red arrow shows the location of one of them at random.
While the lower 2 or 3 floors appeared to have been reused, there now stands a 40 story apartment building with a multiple gabled roof done in an interesting sort of retro style.
Below is a closeup on a portion of the lion's left mane, the two red arrows show the telltale mold seam lines, most were usually smoothed down and blended in but the workers typically missed or overlooked a few here and there. The clay was hand-pressed into multiple sectioned plaster of Paris piece molds, the raised line would be where two adjacent sections met, as they never meet perfectly a small gap results and the clay perfectly takes that impression.
HTML hand coded on a Macintosh with BBEdit
