Daniel D. Badger

The "Little Cary Building" at 620 Broadway got its nickname because of its similarity to...
...the Cary Building on Chambers Street. Both have cast-iron facades by Daniel D. Badger, but were designed by different architects.[1][2]
Grand Central Depot in 1880
Detail of the E. V. Haughwout Building
Part of the top of the Gilsey House Hotel

Daniel D. Badger (15 October 1806–1884[3]) was an American founder, working in New York City under the name Architectural Iron Works. With James Bogardus, he was one of the major forces in creating a cast-iron architecture in the United States.[4] Christopher Gray of The New York Times remarks: "Most cast-iron buildings present problems of authorship – it is hard to tell if it was the founder or the architect who actually designed the facade."[1]

Badger's illustrated catalogues of cast-iron architectural elements provided the most extensive and ambitious offering of them in 19th-century America. Originally intended as an advertising device, the catalogue issued in 1865 was reprinted in 1981, with an introduction by Margot Gayle,[5] and was digitized in 2011 by the Internet Archive with the support of the New York chapter of the Victorian Society of America.[6]

  1. ^ a b Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes:620 Broadway; An 1858 Cast-Iron Palazzo, Now in Its Blue Period" The New York Times (May 1, 2005)
  2. ^ White & Willensky, p.157
  3. ^ Age given as 78 in his obituary in American Architect and Architecture, 16 (1884:254); date given in The New York Times obituary, 19 November 1884:p2, quoted in Grutchfield 2009; biographical details are from these notices
  4. ^ "Daniel D. Badger and Bogardus were leading advocates in developing cast iron" notes G. E. Kidder Smith, Source Book of American Architecture: 500 Notable Buildings, 2000.
  5. ^ Badger's Illustrated Catalogue of Cast-iron Architecture, Dover Pub., (1981)
  6. ^ Digitized Badger's Illustrated Catalogue of Cast-iron Architecture