Grotesque faces staring at you at Hunter College

The East 68th Street campus of Hunter College doesn’t look very collegiate, with its skywalks and square modernist buildings.

But there’s a wonderful exception to all those concrete boxes: Thomas Hunter Hall at 934 Lexington Avenue.

(Thomas Hunter was the first president of this former all-female teachers college founded in 1869, when it was known as Normal College.)

Designed in 1912 by Charles B.J. Snyder, the architect of so many of New York’s elementary and high schools at the turn of the century, this English Gothic castle of a college building features cathedral windows and rooftop turrets that give the impression of a Medieval fortress.

And if you look closely, you’ll see plenty of Gothic-style faces staring back at you.

The facade and twin spires flanking the entrance are packed with grotesques—some scary, some goofy with a sense of humor (like the guy in the glasses above, who has a pencil behind his ear).

Hunter College is part of the City University of New York, and it’s not the only CUNY building decorated with unique, cheeky grotesques.

Visit CUNY’s campus on 137th Street in Harlem—a Gothic architecture lover’s dream—and you’ll encounter the same kind of fun and mischievous characters, like this one, appropriately reading a book. (This is a college, after all!)

[Top photo: Hunter College]

The West Village courthouse inspired by a castle

The fantastical Jefferson Market building—with its turrets, gables, stained glass, and incredible clock tower—started out in 1877 as a courthouse and jail (with a notorious women’s prison in a long-gone building behind it).

It flirted with demolition in the 1950s before being recycled into a branch of the New York Public Library.

This is all old news to fans of gothic-inspired New York architecture. But what isn’t as well-known is that the building was apparently inspired by a German castle—called Neuschwanstein, former home of Bavaria’s King Ludwig II.

The AIA Guide to New York City calls Jefferson Market a “mock Neuscshwansteinian assemblage,” while New York Architecture has compiled some information on the castle, described as “neo-late romanesque.”

Hmm, see a resemblance?