One afternoon I was driving up Fifth Avenue in the company of an
architectural expert who, with the incredible elastic good nature of
American business men, had abandoned his affairs for half a day in order
to go with me on a voyage of discovery, and he asked me, so as to get
some basis of understanding or disagreement, what building in New York
had pleased me most. I at once said the University Club--to my mind a
masterpiece. He approved, and a great peace filled our automobile; in
which peace we expanded. He asked me what building in the world made the
strongest appeal to me, and I at once said the Strozzi Palace at
Florence. Whereat he was decidedly sympathetic.

"Fifth Avenue," I said, "always reminds me of Florence and the
Strozzi.... The cornices, you know."

He stopped the automobile under the Gorham store and displayed to me
the finest cornice in New York, and told me how Stanford White had put
up several experimental cornices there before arriving at finality.
Indeed, a great cornice! I admit I was somewhat dashed by the
information that most cornices in New York are made of cast iron; but
only for a moment! What, after all, do I care what a cornice is made of,
so long as it juts proudly out from the façade and helps the street to a
splendid and formidable sky-line? I had neither read nor heard a word of
the cornices of New York, and yet for me New York was first and last the
city of effective cornices! (Which merely shows how eyes differ!) The
cornice must remind you of Italy, and through Italy of the Renaissance.
And is it not the boast of the United States to be a renaissance? I
always felt that there was something obscurely symbolic in the New York
cornice--symbolic of the necessary qualities of a renaissance, half
cruel and half humane.