Boot Scrapers, Part 5: Simple And Effective

I let this series languish for a while… The stoop of an 1825 rowhouse, with a simple wrought-iron handrail: The newel post is, of course, cast iron, but the rest of the rail is wrought iron. If you look carefully at the stone steps, you can see that the part of each step from the handrail embedments to the near edge is darker colored than the body of the step. This is presumably a series of repairs to the edge, probably for damage from rusting of the embedded iron ends. The iron rods are a little wonky, which is to be expected after 201 years. The two vertical rods at the second step from the bottom, which is the first step up from the newel posts, are spaced farther apart than the pairs of rods at the upper steps, There’s a third rod between them, to keep the overall rod spacing almost consistent, and the third rod ends high in a graceful inverted-Y to allow foot space for the scraper. The scraper is a wrought-iron plate, with a lower double curve that is purely decorative and a nice…