☞ BESPOKE: Mounted Morris' Painted Cornices

Within the Mount Morris Park Historic District (in sunnier days) we spied upon a rare set of brownstones with contrast painted cornices. All that pressed metal on the top of 19th century buildings had a lot of carved detail to them and we always wondered why they weren't painted in different colors to highlight the various embossments. With wood cornices in towns like San Francisco or any small hamlet in upstate New York, contrast color schemes are quite common. The two in the above photo shows an older paint job versus an updated partner. The cornice patterns are the same in both, and a lighter color has been used to highlight the dentils and frieze frames. The only difference is the scroll work on the left-hand house on which the original home owner had painted a paler tone to show the organic forms. The center house opted to paint this portion solid so the detail gets slightly lost. At the end, it's more time consuming and requires a bit of artistry to paint in between the lines so maybe that is why most opt to just paint the whole thing solid. The above buildings are on the south side of West 120th Street, between Lenox and ACP/7th Avenue. The nearest train is the 2,3 at 125th Street. Photo by Ulysses