Washington National Cathedral Gargoyle

Walking down the streets of older American cities, where spired, turreted Gothic Revival buildings tower overhead, have you ever felt the presence of someone watching you?

Well, they are.

Look up.

You’ll be amazed at what’s looking down at you! 

Gargoyles - those weird, usually grotesque, sometimes comic, often outrageous, always fantastic, fanciful caricatures with distinct personalities hanging all over older buildings - are intricate, amazingly detailed architectural carvings of hybrid monsters with both human and animal characteristics, often with mouths agape.  Cleverly blended into their architectural surroundings by master sculptors, they are out there in abundance, whole gatherings of them.  Lurking and leering from perches high overhead, hunched in outcroppings, clinging to outer walls, or poised to pounce from nooks and crannies of religious, educational and governmental buildings, and even from grand mansions, they are more often than not, noticed only through a double-take.  

While their presence in architecture dates back to ancient times and crosses all cultures, their purpose has no universally accepted explanation.  Originally the term used for the fanciful stone carved gutter spouts used to direct rainwater away from building foundations, a gargoyle generically has come to mean any decorative architectural carving of a grotesque nature, and cities are filled with them. 

To find them, just look up. In New York City on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, gargoyles found a welcome home in the arches and flying buttresses rising up to the Neo-Gothic cathedral-like tower of the Woolworth Building. Legions of them are on Wall Street, surely showing their displeasure with recent events.  On the Upper West Side, in the massive, yet unfinished St. John the Divine Cathedral, all manner of fanciful, grotesque creatures fiercely stand guard over niches filled with saints and angels.  On busy Lexington Avenue in Midtown, look up at the iconic Chrysler Building.  Jutting way out from the corners of the 61^st Floor of this spectacular Art Deco building are huge, shiny gargoyles - eagle heads- replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornaments.   

In Chicago, the decorative top of the Gothic Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue is loaded with gargoyle bats! On elegant Nob Hill in San Francisco, those perpendicular protrusions sticking out just below the main spire of magnificent Grace Cathedral are actually eight identical gargoyles, winged dragons perched to take flight in case the forces of evil get too close.  Once sighted, they are obvious, but, without knowing they’re there, they are easily missed.  Such is a gargoyle…there, but not there.  

University of Chicago Gargoyle

Gargoyles are particularly fond of the collegial culture of universities over a century old. Throughout the campus of Princeton University, gargoyles pay homage to the disciplines studied in the buildings they haunt. There are so many there that they star in an online Grotesque Tour.  Click your way, too, for gargoyle sightings at Duke University.  The Quadrangle Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is crawling with them.  Likewise, at the exquisite Gothic University of Chicago, their antics begin at the main entrance gate, where a series of them usher in newbies with warnings of perilous things to come on their climb through academia.   

These fanciful spirits also live in historic mansions throughout the country. In Savannah, many homes in the historic district have downspouts ending in stylized cast iron dolphin heads, gargoyles well suited to this colonial-era seaport city.  The Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina has an amazingly diverse gargoyle collection. While best viewed from below, a special rooftop tour gets them within pouncing range. 

A treasure trove of gargoyles with a 20^th century attitude reside throughout the Washington National Cathedral.  This spectacular Gothic building, completed in 1990, literally crawls with them.  Their unique humor and style comes through a collaborative effort between the private donors who commissioned them and the sculptors who created them.  Fantastically creative, they are wonderful caricatures of the times, the 1960s, 70s and 80s: hippies and yuppies; crooked politicians and greedy thieves; and countless other mischievous and appealing modern spirits in stone who bring a smile…to those who notice.  

Wherever your travels take you, get in the habit of looking up!

Biltmore Estate Gargoyle

They are always watching.

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