When Clara Aich, a Hungarian photographer, first stepped inside the old foundry at 218 East 25th Street in Manhattan, the building was a majestic ruin. It was winter 1977, and snow had fallen through the collapsed roof of the four-story, 19th-century brick structure, powdering the ramshackle floor of its main studio space. Most evocatively, the place was filled to the rafters with plaster models of architectural sculptures: gods and gargoyles, cherubs and lions, eagles and nymphs.
No other buyer was interested in the wreck, but Ms. Aich was captivated by it, common sense be damned. “‘I’m somewhere in Rome,’” she recalled thinking as she stood in the freezing studio. “It was just hauntingly beautiful for me.”
Though light on funds, she scrounged up the $15,000 down payment, plus another $10,000 for the architectural ornaments, undeterred by warnings from friends about the daunting cost of repairing the building.
“It was the dream of youth,” she said.
The plaster ornaments, it turned out, were models left behind by Rochette & Parzini, a prolific firm founded by a Frenchman and an Italian that from 1909 to 1972 worked on fine architectural sculpture in that studio for city landmarks like the Morgan Library, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“For me they were very important,” Ms. Aich said of the ornaments. “They became part of me when I saw them there.”
