Iron Flower

Floral detail of an iron railing along State Street (below Lark)

Cast Iron Ruins

This is such a sad site along lower Madison. This heavy railing is broken and rusted, the windows shuttered, and the brownstone steps are badly crumbled. But it's obvious this was once a very handsome house on the hill just below the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and little Bleecker Park.

Spike and Spiral

A bit of an elegant iron rail around outside the Old Post Office on Broadway opposite the foot of State Street.

Like Old Lace

Beautiful old iron railings on a Westerlo Street house. The adjacent building has an identical balcony in black.

Gothic Remnant

Very little is left of this once-ornate cast iron railing on Clinton Avenue just up from North Pearl Street.

Broken Fences

A number of plots in the Albany Rural Cemetery are surrounded by fences as ornamental as the monuments themselves. This badly deteriorated cast iron fence encloses a family plot on the crest of a hill not far from the Cemetery's main entrance. The railing includes the popular mourning motif of inverted - but not extinguished - torches. Similar torches are found on monuments throughout the Cemetery. This family plot also includes a marble portrait medallion by Erastus Dow Palmer and the grave of Colonel Lewis Benedict, killed at the Battle of Pleasant Hill in 1864.

Graceful Railings

Loops and swirls make for a very elegant railing along Broadway north of Clinton Avenue. Unfortunately, the other railing is missing and this one is beginning to rust.