Putti - Mechanic to Farmer
The figures on the staircase are known as putti and represent the various occupations, habits, and pursuits of contemporary American life in the late nineteenth century, when the building was opened.
A putto (plural putti) is a figure of a pudgy human baby, almost always male, often naked and having wings, found especially in Italian Renaissance art.
• A Mechanic, with a cogwheel, a pair of pincers, and a crown of laurel, signifying the triumphs of invention
• A Hunter, with his gun, holding up by the ears a rabbit that he has just shot
• An infant Bacchanalian, with Bacchus’s ivy and panther skin, hilariously holding a champagne glass in one hand
• A Farmer, with a sickle and a sheaf of wheat