New Britain herald., 1921-08-30
ART INSPECTION IS
 LATEST SOCIETY FAD
Finding Of CarYen SatireS Starts
 New Diversion

New York, Aug 3O.-Devoting spare hours to careful inspection of public buildings in the hope of finding sa- tire in stone has become a fad.
 It began with the discovery by a reporter that architects had carved a dollar sign as a twin motif to the lovers knot over the "bridge's en- trance to St. Thomas's church on Fifth avenue. A few days later some one leaving the Sunday services ob- served for the first time that minia- ture faces of modern men and maids of the avenue had been chiseled above the main door of the edif1ce. A con- gregation that went to pray remained to laugh.
 Some of these caricatures wore monocles, others wore smiles;. some were surely tired business men and good housewives while others mani festly were 1appers and boulevardiers. Everybody conceded that they repre- sented modern Fifth avenue types"
 One face was not so modern, how ever. It was a year or two behind the times. On it's nose was the un- mistakable bulge of a rum blossom" Another had such a tored look ob- servers were sure it was man who
 
 wife.
 Runnors that many we'll known buildings in New York had been sub jected to jocose treatment by the ar tisans who worked upon them moved whole f1ocks of people to sally forth. some with spy-glasses or lorgnettes, to look for sculptured jokes. Archi- tects gave interviews explaining how car ho 1f humor has been practiced since the middle ages, not in a spirit of levity, but with the design of presenting to the people examples of right and wrong in thought and action, they said. Skeptics persisted in believing the architects had just had their little joke, and none would have been sur- prised in finding bust of Lenine concealed in the decorations of the New York Stock Exchange, or carv ing of Falstaff at the headquarters of the Anti-Saloon league.
 At New Haven it was noted that Hardness Memorial Quadrangle which every Yale man considers the last word in college architecture-in America-sheltered among the hooks of it's buildings many faces, figures and symbols of college life. There was the placid bulldog with horned trimmed spectacles and a grim -visaged bulldog wearing a football helmet, and there were many shades of Blue history revived in stone.
 The students, unlike some of the parishioners of St. Thomas's church, were pleased with the decorative work. It is believed no Yale student will raise single sigh of objection unless somebody discovers Harvard | man graven in the structure.
 Designers of Gothic buildings al- ways have peen possessors of a hu- morous drafting pen. Their satiric chuckles at clergy and laity have come down through the centuries in the stone of many of the sober old cathedrals of Europe. The medieval craftsmen were downright boisterous | in some of their caricatures. Glut- | tony is portrayed in clerical robes on the battlements of Magdalen college, Oxford. In a Yorkshire church ''Ec- clesiastical Sincerity is rendered by two foxes, representing the sporting clergy of the Middle Ages, listening to a bishops instructions. Out of their hoods peep the heads of stolen geese.
 Thirteenth century fun-makers gulf lfawed nightly at all orders of clergy in an ornamentation of the >Strasburg |cathedral depicting The Funeral of the Fox" This sculpture created so many irritating embroglios among fchurchgoers that it was demolished lin the middle of the nineteenth cen- }tury. Wandering minstrels of the Middle Ages were satirized for the |fondness of free meals, one of the stalls of Westminster cathedral show ling a flddling pig.
 II Architects have said that many churches of America, unknown to their congregations, contain hum orous decorations. Prevailing interest IT. finding them is expected to increase
 church attendance.