Elephants on East 10th Street
Posted by Scout on February 23rd, 2009
This building, 9 East 10th Street (once the home of author Dawn Powell), features a really, really neat building number sign.

It’s beautifully ornate, especially on this otherwise unremarkable building.

I love the African theme, sort of feels like it should be on the outside of a safari club (note: commenters are saying this is Indian – I apologize for my cultural ignorance).


-SCOUT
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The sigh is stunning!!! The floral pattern reminds me of Balinese wood craft, but looking at the elephants, it could be Indian wood craft..
i agree, i think it’s more likely indian than african.
good find regardless!!!
hey-o!
lovely blog, was directed here from curbed.com. I love your discovery of the Minetta Creek, I’m a student at NYU and learned about the creek/a lot of the city’s history pre-people but didn’t know it’s THAT close to campus, thanks
[...] I posted about the ornate sign on East 10th Street featuring a herd of elephants. As it happens, I was later in the Upper East Side when I saw this building around the East [...]
Too bad the trunks are facing down. That is one bad luck charm or should I say 6 bad luck charms at your front door.
[...] PS – Not everyone buried here is unkown; some were simply those whose bodies were unclaimed after they died. This included author Dawn Powell, whose building we coincidentally posted about earlier in the week (Elephants on East 10th Street). [...]
I’m going through your archives, so I apologize for the lateness of this post but I love that you reference Dawn Powell!!! One of my favorite authors. Her books about NYC are fantastic.
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I actually lived in this building growing. You’d be sad to know that although they have chosen to keep the exterior original (there used to be black paint covering all the wood work on the front, which they had removed), they gutted the inside to make it more modern. the initials “AVA” are those of the architect’s wife fyi. I love that front too much
The initials, “AVA” are, unfortunately NOT the initials of the architect’s wife. His wife’s name was Florence Lucretia Sands. They were married in 1893. The origin of the name “AVA” is something of a mystery; one guess is that it relates to a town upstate by that name where the architect, William Hamilton Russell, summered with his family when he was a boy.