Sunday's New York Times contained Christopher Gray's splendid appreciation of the Sicilian-born New York architect Gaetan Ajello (1883-1983). Ajello came to this country in 1902, at a time when vast numbers of southern Italians and Sicilians were coming over. There were so many ways in which the Italian immigrants of that era helped to make New York the "City Beautiful." Many, if not most, of the masons and other building craftsmen of that time who adorned speculative buildings with anonymous artwork of the highest caliber came from Italy. The Italian publisher Carlo Barsotti spearheaded campaigns among Italian-Americans to erect statues and monuments honoring notable Italians--including the wonderful rostral column in Columbus Circle. In addition, the heavy Italian involvement in the building trades led to some immigrants rising to become prominent developers, for example the Paterno brothers. Yet when we look at the architects of the period, very few Italians show up. Ajello was an exception. Like the city's Jewish immigrant architects of the time, Ajello did not attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He did not receive civic commissions. He worked mostly in the realm of speculative apartment development. But as Gray points out, Ajello's buildings have a sumptuousness and exuberance that, as much as any of our grand civic buildings, define the quality of the Manhattan streetscape. This is especially so in Morningside Heights, that wonderland of the classical apartment house. For example, look at the west side of Claremont Avenue between 116th and 119th Streets, a palisade of eye-popping classical details that a Beaux-Arts person of the time might have found slightly vulgar, but that we now know was quintessentially New York.
Anyway, the occasion of Gray's piece is the Landmarks Preservation Commission's recent designation not of an Ajello apartment building but of his Claremont Theater (.pdf).
The theater is at Broadway and 135th Street. It is, as Gray notes, fairly typical of its time, which was 1914. That it was typical just underscores the richness of our architecture at that time. I have been trying to find some good images of Ajello apartment buildings and have thus far struck out. If anyone has any or can point me to one, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise I'll just have to take my camera to Morningside Heights.
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