There were several of these hand made stone facades; actually, I'm not sure what you would call them. Construction on the main house required the labor of about 1,000 workers and 60 stonemasons. From Wiki: The carved decorations include trefoils, flowing tracery, rosettes, gargoyles, and at prominent lookouts, grotesques. The staircase is one of the more prominent features of the east façade, with its three-story, highly decorated winding balustrade with carved statues of St. Louis and Joan of Arc by the Austrian-born architectural sculptor Karl Bitter.