NYC’s best gargoyles and grotesques

BRONX

6 Bronx Zoo
Heins and La Farge designed the elephant-, rhino- and baboon-inspired grotesque safari adorning the zoo’s original Astor Court buildings in the early 1900s. The duo’s designs for the Interborough Transit, NYC’s first subway system, debuted in 1904.
Subway: 2, 5 to West Farms Sq–East Tremont Ave

7 Gould Memorial Library and Hall of Fame for Great Americans
Just three years after debuting these NYC landmarks, designer Stanford White was murdered at the site of the original Madison Square Garden. “He had been dating the most beautiful woman in America, Evelyn Nesbit,” relates gargoyle guru Art Zuckerman. “And her jealous husband sees this architect and just blows his brains out.” Spooky.
Subway: 4 to 183rd St

BROOKLYN

8 Queen Anne–style house
The lion-head grotesque overlooking the entrance of this Brooklyn brownstone was recommended by local stone carver Joe Chiffriller.
Subway: A to Ozone Park–Lefferts Blvd

9Green-Wood Cemetery
For a close encounter with one of these waterspoutin’ critters, Green-Wood cemetery historian Jeff Richman recommends the monument to 19th-century fizzy-drink mogul John Matthews. Sculpted by Karl Muller in 1870, the playhouse-size structure has a traditional gargoyle fountain hitched to each roof corner.
Subway: N, R to 25th St

10 Brooklyn Museum of Art
The Coney Island–born zinc lion now mounted over the museum’s staff entrance has its own episode of History Detectives on PBS, but Brooklyn Museum representative Sally Williams instead recommends a “menacing” grotesque fixed to the glass corridor overlooking the sculpture garden. “He’s adorable,” she explains. While the designers and birthdays of both of these inherited grotesques remain a mystery, Williams guesses that the pieces were most likely constructed between 1890 and 1910.
Subway: 2, 3 to Eastern Pkwy–Brooklyn Museum

STATEN ISLAND

11 Trinity Lutheran Church
“Each one occupies a corner of the bell tower, and they all depict a griffinlike character,” says current pastor Richard F. Michael of Trinity’s grotesques. “They had to be placed here as part of the gothic structure.”
Travel: From the Staten Island Ferry, take the S78 bus to the corner of St. Paul’s Ave and Cebra Ave

12 Curtis High School
Also part of C.B.J. Snyder’s early-20th-century menagerie of grotesque-infested schools, Curtis prides itself on the gender-bending mystique of its terra-cotta figures. “The grotesques are very androgynous,” says student-affairs coordinator, “or for lack of a better word, school historian,” Joe Sicilian. “We like that because our school has always been known to have more women than men.”
Travel: From the Staten Island Ferry, take a taxi to 105 Hamilton Ave

MANHATTAN