Rochester's City Hall-an exploration of the scuptural faces located throughout the building.
With work started in 1884, Rochester's present City Hall, was constructed in a building boom by the Federal Government to house Post Offices and Federal courthouses. Started from a design by Rochester architect Harvey Ellis, but finished by the Federal architects under Mifflen Bell, the building owes it's design to a revival of Romanesque architecture popularized by H. H. Richardson. Located on all four sides of the building are an interesting collection of sculptural faces- Greenmen-Greenwomen-and Medieval inspired faces of Princes-Princess, exaggerated paupers and fanciful beasts . Intrigued by the origins and the shear beauty of the sculptors I have photographed and completed a key to the location of every face on the building. On forty-one different locations, usually at the end of a window arch, exist these stone faces...
Although which architect actually designed the building is up to debate, the builder, Hiram Edgerton is not. Edgerton's father owned a lumber supply company that the young Hiram inherited when he was 21 years old. Formally at the site of the present Dinosaur Barbecue the lumber company moved to St. Paul Street where Edgerton eventually started his career as a Contractor. Responsible for the Federal Building, expansion of the Powers Hotel, the Wilder Building and Sibley, Lindsey & Curr buildings, all built without any contracts, just hand shakes, Edgerton went on to build 40 churches and 1000 of houses in Rochester. Edgerton ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1895, but kept his hopes alive and was able to win election in 1907, where he served as one of Rochester's longest serving Mayors until he resigned due to ill health in 1921.
Along with the beauty of the carved heads that decorate City Hall, is the mystery of who carved them. Very little is known about the actual workers that did the stone and brick work on the former Federal Building. Assumptions abound, with one Wikipiedia insert attesting the spread of Richardsonian Romanesque due to Irish workmen who traveled west with the style as skilled masons in the art of building larger stone and steel structures. Records in local landmark societies and the Rochester Historical Society have as of yet to yield any information of the source and manpower that carved the heads.
Seen here is the classic Green Man. This motif is usually a mature man, staring out from Oak leaves which seem to grow from his face, as he is both slightly concealed and peaking from the foliage.
Known as the consort of Mother Nature the Greenman restores balance to nature, when there are to many deer, the Greenman sends the wolves, this balancing act has given the Greenman many names, Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, a man who lived in forest and robs from the rich to restore balance by giving to the poor. Believed to have roots in Hindu Art, the Greenman motif seems to show up in Romanesque Buildings as faces peering form the leafy motifs on the capitals of columns in church architecture. Co-opted from cletic lore, the greenman does not have a Catholic origins, but is found on many Romanesque churches throughout France and into England. In modern day England, greenmen are common motifs for Pubs, I guess restoring balance to a drunken state?! An interesting aspect of the faces on the first level of the Rochester Federal Building is the fact that there is not only the traditional Greenman, but also a mature green woman, or queen, two princes, one princess, or younger men and women, and finally a green child!
(see above row of faces taken from the South side of the building)
Rochester's City Hall, (formerly the Federal Building) has 41 faces on the four sides and tower of the building. The lower level faces are green men, women children and green animals. The higher level of faces that are on the tower reflect a medieval motif and are princess, queens and troubadours.
Faces on three sides of the building have different themes, these on the East side of the building have a distinctly nautical, or sea motif, rather then the normal oak leaves, these have seaweed type leaves or as in the flowing hair face hearkens to a ships masthead. Other peculiarities are the leaves used as sideburns and the first face with it's cap and wings, alluding to Mercury.
On the North side of the original building, now obscured by the annex are more faces, once again reflecting their own motifs, this side has more animal influenced faces then any other side of the building. In the shot below, right above the low level annex is the faces, hidden from view unless you are on the roof top.
The eight faces on the North Face of City Hall, both male and female once again do not reflect the "standard" greenman motif, going from the seemingly cuddly almost teddy bear and lion faces, to a more demonic motif, mixed in with a Cleopatra, Don Quoite, and a prince and princess style motif, (Hercules and Athena?) These faces are regretfully in poor shape due to two major reasons, none of the faces on this side do not have a lintel above them to provide runoff, and prevent snow accumulation, and two the Portland Brown Stone grain is running up and down on many of the faces which has a tendency to crack the stone with the expansion and contraction of water in and on the stone face. During the last renovation, all three sides of the building were renovated with particular emphasis put on the structural aspects of the building, still the faces on the East, West and South sides plus the towers did get treatments to prevent further erosion, but those on the north were neglected.
This is a good example of the "grain" of the stone when it runs in an up and down direction, without adequate protection the stone will start to crack and eventually destroy the entire sculpture. Faces on the other sides of the building were chiseled back, and cracks were filled with a stone putty that formed to shape like cement, and also could be cut just like the stone complete with chisel marks.
The Architects on the project had the stone mason, Anthony ( I do apologize to Anthony for not being able to find his last name in my records) shown in the right shot, chisel back cracked and protruding parts of the faces. Next studs were applied to those areas to help the compound adhere to the face. He then applied a synthetic compound formulated for texture and color onto the surface, letting it dry slowly, Anthony occasionally sprayed down the wet areas to slow drying and strengthen the patch. After the patch had dried, using traditional stone mason techniques he carved new features onto the surface. Surprisingly there was not much effort put into duplicating the faces exactly, Anthony was given carte blanc to carve the new details as he saw fit. An interesting aspect of this is one of the lower duplicated faces of the green princes, was given a very broad nose, and now has distinctly African American features.
The right and center images are the same face from different angles but the nose had been significantly "broadened" as compared to a similar face from the same level, but from the Church Street or south side of the building. As I have stated earlier there was no disrespect for the artistic merit of the faces, but the architects, contractor and the City itself made no effort to duplicate the faces as they originally existed. Two additional faces from the Tower area were in such disrepair that they crumbled to pieces as the masons tried to remove them. These two faces were carved new by the Lauri company, the stone contractors on the project, and once again the stone carver was given latitude to create a similar, but not exact sculpture to replace the original. As to the merits of this approach, I personally am not offended by the effort not to be historically accurate. I am surprised that the architects did not do additional research on the faces, as there exist quite a few high quality photographs of the building from different time periods that could have been consulted if someone was concerned about what the original looked like. Major concern was given to minimizing the amount of water in the forms of ice and snow that could eventually erode the faces through expansion by freezing and thawing.
LEGEND TO THE LOCATION OF THE FACES
Rochester's City Hall, Fronts onto Church Street, (South Facade), wraps around onto North Fitzhugh Street (West Facade) faces State Street (East Facade),and hidden from view is the Annex Side (North Facade). Below are photographic legends of the placements of each face, with colored coresponding drop shadows with sqaures of similar colors locating the place where each face is on that Facade.
These are the legends to the location of the forty-faces of Rochester City Hall, each side was photographed and entered into Adobe Photoshop, where I applied a filter called Find Edges which keeps the shape of the building, but allows the colored boxes to show the location of each face. My intent is to create a large folio and with these pages 13 x19 horizontally makes it easy to see where each face is located on the building. An extravagent version could have each face printes 8.5 x 13 making for a nice heavy coffee table book!