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By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: April 21, 2011
New York’s streets used to be a sea of Knox hats; these days the place you’ll find them is on eBay, about a hundred at the moment. Many were sold for the first time at the overwrought structure just south of the New York Public Library.
Ornate and chunky, the Knox Hat Building is of an entirely different order from the spare, neo-Classic Grant’s Tomb. But both are by John Hemenway Duncan, who gave the Beaux-Arts style a subtle yet distinctive twist.
Born in 1854, Duncan is known to have been in New York as early as 1880, but was otherwise off the radar until 1885, when his first commissions came in a flood — requests for commodious 25-foot-front town houses, and lesser jobs like redoing the Murray Hill house of James C. Fargo, the head of Wells Fargo. John Straiton, a cigar manufacturer, had Duncan design a picturesque group of shingled houses at 150th Street and Convent Avenue, some of which still stand.
more...
Published: April 21, 2011
New York’s streets used to be a sea of Knox hats; these days the place you’ll find them is on eBay, about a hundred at the moment. Many were sold for the first time at the overwrought structure just south of the New York Public Library.
Ornate and chunky, the Knox Hat Building is of an entirely different order from the spare, neo-Classic Grant’s Tomb. But both are by John Hemenway Duncan, who gave the Beaux-Arts style a subtle yet distinctive twist.
Born in 1854, Duncan is known to have been in New York as early as 1880, but was otherwise off the radar until 1885, when his first commissions came in a flood — requests for commodious 25-foot-front town houses, and lesser jobs like redoing the Murray Hill house of James C. Fargo, the head of Wells Fargo. John Straiton, a cigar manufacturer, had Duncan design a picturesque group of shingled houses at 150th Street and Convent Avenue, some of which still stand.
more...
