Upper East Side, 71st Street Between Park and Lexington Avenues

Mary Sargent © 2009 ……………click to enlarge


Tonight is Architecture Night; we consider the cornice. You may have thought, as I did, that a cornice is merely a decorative part of a building, the piece which projects from the top of a building and seems to finish it. However, Wikipedia states that it has a function as well, and that is to keep rainwater away from the building. If your building does not have a cornice, it must have other ways to accomplish this, like having gutters, for example.

Now notice that our middle building lacks a cornice. Its design is overall more simple. See how the window treatments are simpler than its neighbors windows? But the lack of a cornice creates a silly looking gap between it and its corniced neighbors. And where are the gutters? And it does have a cornice over its doorway.

By the way, this is the New York Center for Cosmetic Dentistry. You don't think the gap at the top was an allusion to having a missing tooth, do you? I hope not.