McKevin Shaughnessy – “The Hidden Faces of Hoboken”

March 14, 2021 - April 25, 2021.

Mascarons. That’s the term for an architectural ornament in the form of a face — realistic, idealized or mythical — adorning a building facade. They are omnipresent, but easily overlooked by people hurrying along, amid the profusion of signs and other visual stimuli in a dense urban environment. 

Artist and graphic designer McKevin Shaughnessy says he hadn’t really taken note of them until recently. He has lived in Hoboken since the mid-1980s, but he started only noticing how many faces are embedded in Hoboken’s cityscape when his work commute shifted from Manhattan to Hoboken’s Southwestern corner.

What began as an idle way to entertain himself as he walked through Hoboken became an obsession and a pandemic project: Documenting over 550 (and counting) faces throughout Hoboken. With more free time over the winter and the trees bare of leaves, Shaughnessy’s project blossomed into an attempt to catalogue every “hidden face” he could spot from the sidewalk. 

“The overall variety is staggering,” he says, “from family portraits to mythical griffins, bald eagles, lion heads, imaginary beasts, viking warriors, a sultan, numerous kings, a wolfman, the wolverine, a birdman, princesses and goddesses, cherubs and the like.”

He thought it might make a nice art project, so he started counting the faces along his usual walking routes, photographing every hidden face that revealed itself to him, taking notes on their locations. 

“Once you start looking it’s like an avalanche, especially some corners and neighborhoods,” Shaughnessy says. “Originally, I hoped it might be possible to find 26 such examples to create an A to Z listing.”

“What I have found, though, is truly mind-blowing,” he explains, “and it starts as soon as one sets foot in Hoboken. In fact, there is even a bronze lion head drinking fountain inside the Lackawanna Terminal.”

Between the train terminal and City Hall, he has counted nine separate building sites sporting over 100 heads. At first, he thought that seemed like a really high number, but then he discovered one corner in Hoboken with two separate sites facing each other. “Their combined total is 135 heads!” 

To date, he has recorded 89 separate sites around town for a total of 557 individual faces. (His son Ian found the latest two.) The heads are as far west as Monroe Street (eight heads carved into white marble columns) and as far north as 14th Street — which features 18 mermaids, by the way. (A careful observer will find the 19th mermaid, he hints). Some heads are hidden below eye-level or behind shrubbery. He even spied one on a chimney way up high, an outrageous face with a wide-open mouth, and ribbons for ears. 

Why so many? According to the Louvre’s catalogue, mascarons originally were meant to frighten away evil spirits, but after the Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries, they gradually became merely decorative elements featuring realistic or idealized faces, depending on the fashions of the times. The use of faces in architecture spans many cultures, and it’s likely that Hoboken’s immigrant population saw them as a touch of elegance — and perhaps as a way to differentiate one row home or bank building from the next.

“One historic home on Hudson Street, dated 1892, is adorned with 19 exquisitely ornate heads. There are even three heads on the Theta Xi Fraternity house on the Stevens campus.”

He knows there were even more, once. He has found some images on Google Maps showing where some heads used to be. He speculates that some may have fallen, and others may have been removed or covered up during renovations. For that reason, he’s glad he’s documenting them before any more disappear. He is currently compiling these into a book project, along with a “pared down” version for a walking tour map. Mostly, though, he hopes his fellow Hobokenites will look up and start noticing them, too.

“The Hidden Faces of Hoboken,” which opened on March 14, features about 20 framed images he’s taken and printed in black and white, with several more in color. In addition, the Museum’s Artist’s Talk with Museum Director Bob Foster, which is now archived on YouTube, will be available on a monitor. The interview also features some highlights of Shaughnessy’s graphic design work (he does most of the Museum’s signs, posters and postcards) as well, and contains information about the Find the Hidden Faces of Hoboken contest that concludes on the show’s closing date of Sunday, April 25, at 5 pm.

Join in the hunt for hidden faces: 

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.