296 BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



lodging slopes whereon dust and dirt can accumulate, as in 

 the case of rock-face blocks. For the fronts of dwelling- 

 houses, which are destined to change or reconstruction be- 

 fore the tide of business, and whose average life rarely equals 

 that of its owner or occupant, brownstone, even on edge, 

 has its advantages and serves its day and purpose. When 

 selected with care, and placed on its bedding planes, it is a 

 durable and beautiful building material. The Vanderbilt 

 houses, on Fifth avenue, between Fifty-first and Fifty- 

 second streets, the Stuart house, at the corner of Sixty- 

 eighth street, and others on the same avenue, above Forty- 

 second street, and many on Madison and Park avenues, and 

 West Fifty-seventh street, show Connecticut brownstone to 

 its best advantage. On the other hand no other variety of 

 stone used in the city appears in so many buildings to be in 

 such a state of disintegration and hastening to ultimate 

 ruin. The rear wall of the Court of General Sessions build- 

 ing, in City Hall park, although dating back to 1852, only, 

 is a sad example of exfoliation on a large scale. In the 

 older cross streets, below Fourteenth, the brownstone sills, 

 caps and stoops of the older private houses are, generally, 

 much disintegrated and out of repair. On the lower part of 

 Fifth avenue, examples are numerous where the fine-tooled 

 blocks are scaling badly. The balustrades, rails and posts 

 are particularly in bad condition, owing to the splitting of 

 the stone which, in these cases, is set vertically. The Brick 

 Presbyterian church, at the corner of Thirty-seventh street, 

 has lost the greater part of the original surface of its stone 

 pilasters by fiaking. On West Twenty-third and West 

 Thirty-fourth streets, between Sixth and Eighth avenues, 

 the decay of the brownstone is seen in many houses and in 

 several church fronts. 



In some of the newer buildings, up-town and beyond the 

 park, brownstone, in rock-face blocks, and set on bedding 

 plane, is seen. A tendency in this direction is eminently 

 to be desired. The greater durability, when employed in 



