Terra Cotta: Perth Amboy Decorated American Cities
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Transcript
Perth Amboy once shipped decoration into the architecture of other cities.
Architectural terra cotta was one of its signature industries.
Terra cotta is fired clay shaped into durable architectural components.
It could imitate carved stone, produce repeated ornament economically and create richly colored façades.
As American cities grew taller and more elaborate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, demand expanded.
Perth Amboy had the right industrial combination:
clay knowledge, manufacturing skill, transportation and access to metropolitan markets.
The city's historic-resources survey says Perth Amboy produced more terra cotta than any other New Jersey community in the nineteenth century.
By the early twentieth century, several major works operated here, including the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company and other factories.
Their products traveled far beyond the city.
The factories themselves are largely gone.
The industrial legacy survives paradoxically on buildings.
The 2016 city survey recorded dozens of structures retaining terra-cotta detailing.
Schools, shops, houses and civic buildings became accidental catalogs of local manufacturing.
Even the George Washington statue near City Hall connects to the industry.
This is a useful industrial-history correction.
Manufacturing is often remembered through giant steel mills or smokestacks.
Perth Amboy specialized in a product that ended up looking decorative rather than industrial.
But every ornament required designers, molds, kilns, material handling, shipping and labor.
Beauty had a factory floor.
For locals, look at façades differently after this stop.
A molded cornice or colored panel may not simply be architectural style.
It can be evidence of the city's place in a national construction economy.
Perth Amboy helped decorate urban America while building its own industrial identity.