NOTE: The address turned out to actually be 213 Eldridge street, not 215. Photos named "215" in file names will be left as they are- too many cross-links to have to check and change.

Map shows 213 and 214 in he center- the house numbers are all denoted sideways along the street. The lot numbers 64 (for 213) and 10 (for 214) are easier to see, while the larger number 416 on the bottom right is the block number;

Sculpture group of Neptune with sea-shell from the top floor of this building. I was about to drag the main piece weighing about 135 pounds down the staircase from the roof, and had positioned it on the roof by the door and just stepped down backwards onto the top step of staircase I had walked up to the roof with a few hours earlier, when all of a sudden the entire section of stairs I was standing on collapsed down onto the next floor below. I was left literally hanging from the roof door thresh-hold by my finger tips, now that was interesting and not something I really wanted to repeat!

That was the unpredictable and unstable nature of these buildings- I had climbed that very staircase just hours before and it gave virtually no indication of any weakness or sign it might collapse. It simply peeled off the wall and whatever support it had at the top.

Here's a photo of the roof after I removed Neptune and his friends from the facade, note the large hole I had to chop into the roof to access the back of this. The observant viewer can make out a piece of sheet metal a little below center with an upsidedown festoon on it- this was curious because it was stuffed inside the cornice cavity in the roof and was obviously meant to go on the facade in the sheet metal cornice but had never been installed or was damaged and removed and junked in there.

The photo circa 1976 is one of those polaroid wait-develop 5 minutes-and-peel-the-backing-off-and-wipe-with-the-brush type pictures, the emulsion is sort of peeling off the paper a little. I repaired the worst in photoshop.

Facade, same polaroid film, emulsion chemicals squeezed out on the paper when it came out of the camera- leaving the chemical damage on the bottom.

Detail of the above showing where Neptune was located, he was by this point removed but I hadn't removed the rest yet when I shot this photo.

Multiple piece frieze section.

Photo below was made during demolition, as with most of the instamatic photos the camera's field of view wasn't enough from the close distance across the street to capture the whole facade in one image and due to parallax angles two images like this never line up and due to the differences in the sun exposure even the overall color ballance and exposure differs. The alternative was worse- NO photo at all.

In the lower center can be seen where over the entrance doorway there was a hole in the wall that was shored up with heavy timbers and doors, some bricks can be seen skewed at an angle. This came about when amateur scavengers carelessly removed the other large corbel sculpture that was supporting a 8" thick by about 8 foot long, 4 foot wide slab of stone comprising the portico.

The corbels were a pair of scrolled terra-cotta brackets with a female face not unlike a figurehead on a ship. It also had a large terra cotta block above it so it was two pieces and quite an all day affair to remove it with the use of a small chain hoist as well.

I removed one and left the other there as it was the ONLY support the slab had besides it's one edge embedded in the wall- the slab was cantlevered on the corbels.

Someone attempted to remove the other one, and the huge slab of stone it was supporting crashed to the sidewalk, and in the process it took part of the brick wall between two windows above it out with it! All I can say is it must have made a hell of a noise when it all came down. It's a miracle with the loss of that much support that the facade wall didnt fall down. From the looks of one of the two stone lintels over the two windows that is tipped downward and having a few bricks between them that fell out- it was darn close, simply a miracle.

I believe I remember finding broken pieces of the corbel on the sidewalk, so they didn't even get the piece out intact and destroyed it.

Here is a photo of the one I removed from this building, I took the photo with that polaroid camera and under the florescent lamps and with time the whole photo was a copper green color! It is very poor but the only one I have.

I removed the green hue in Photoshop, unfortunately it meant removing most of what color there was as green was the dominant color in the print. The lady corbel was rich red colored terra-cotta and can be seen with the large rectangular separately made block on top. The height of the two pieces was about 3 feet. The lady sported wings, and braided hair, she also had a single pointed crown which is not visible in the photo. Her face resembled the Statue of Liberty.