Randall's Urban Architectural Sculptures

A new acquisition, a large parapet cornice lion from a Chicago bank located at 122-136 LaSalle St, Corner of Adams. He’s 17 wide, 22″ high, 17″ deep, shipped at 114# but with 11# of mortar removed he now weighs in at 103#

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, Reutan & 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.

Sample cast in the Old Dirty Nickel finish, the mold was finished today, casts are now in production;

Unknown origin, it dates to circa 1920. Glazed terra cotta architectural facade block.

No doubt a very rare sculpture.

A very nice quality publication asked me to submit an article, after checking their web site I found a lot of interesting articles and stories and felt my article would be very good in so nice a format.

Here is the completed article link;

http://www.lostmag.com/issue18/newyork.php

More progress for today

Started today, Nr D6-R

The first panel model is done insofar as the modelling stage goes, as the clay dries out then final cleanup etc can take place.

This is nearing completion

The Nortown theater by the way was located at 6320 North Western Avenue, Chicago, IL

I began my reduced scale model of the first of the set of three frieze panel designs that were located on the Nortown theater’s ground floor facade.

Photo showing the design and it’s guide-lines are now roughly drawn on the surface of the clay;

As I work on this model in the coming week, the design gets developed, deepened refined and detailed, but this is how all of these were done in the old days, and this is how I do them as well.
This is the Nortown theater design which will be designated as Nr D5-R

Randall