Abroad in New York

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The New York Sun

One of the most spectacular buildings that is slightly off the beaten path in New York is the former Childs restaurant building on the boardwalk in Coney Island. I hear you thinking: That’s off the beaten path? It’s at West 21st Street, a part of the boardwalk that is visited by few who venture to Coney Island. That’s west of the site where Steeplechase Park, the westernmost of the great Coney Island amusement parks, stood, and therefore west of KeySpan Park, which occupies part of the Steeplechase Park site and is about as far west as anyone who doesn’t live in Coney Island ever ventures.


Indeed, the Childs building is on a bleak stretch of boardwalk. In order to get to it from the Stillwell Terminal, you have to walk past the beautiful Parachute Jump, then past the criminally ugly Abe Stark recreation center – one of the city’s most baleful structures. The Childs building then rises like a mirage.


It could stand a sprucing up, but it’s only fair to note that the post-Childs owners of the property, most recently the Tell chocolate factory, have not obscured most of the building’s glorious ornamentation.


The Childs chain of family restaurants was once ubiquitous in New York. William and Samuel Childs opened the first one on Cortlandt Street in 1889. At one time, the restaurants were designed all in a sanitary white. Some Childs outlets, however, were designed in a manner appropriate to their settings. The restaurant on the boardwalk, built in 1924, was one. Childs hired a prominent firm, Dennison & Hirons, to design it.


Ethan Dennison and Frederic Hirons had been to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and knew how to design classical buildings. The Landmarks Preservation Commission calls this building “Churrigueresque,” referring to a particularly exuberant strain of Spanish Baroque. And while the Childs building’s ornamentation is nothing if not exuberant, this riot of richly colored marine motifs is carefully controlled.


The material is terra cotta. Around the turn of the 20th century, we began to apply brilliant colored glazes to terra cotta, resulting in a thrilling episode in our architectural history. Remarkably, often in spite of a lack of maintenance over the years, these glazes have held up, as here.


On your way to or from the Childs building, pause to admire the recently stabilized and painted Parachute Jump. This amusement ride came to Steeplechase Park in 1941, and closed in 1968. Since, people have wanted to revive it as a ride, though no one has made that happen. Brooklynites love the structure nonetheless, especially since its sprucing up. The 262-foot-high openwork steel tower, its form etched against the blue ocean, has been called Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower. I almost prefer it not to reopen as a ride. For in its present state, it stands for nothing but beauty. With the Childs building, it reminds us that beauty resides in the most unexpected places in the city.


The New York Sun

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