"Fatuous" is the only word to describe a search for the integration of architecture and sculpture from antiquity, because from Petra to Elephanta Island to the jungles of Cambodia they're all inseparable, and the human figure is carved, one way or another, into the ruined stone temples of Ceylon, the ancient Turkish coast, Honduras, really wherever you look.

If it's familiar precedent you're looking for, the Caryatid Porch has six female load-bearing figures, used as columns, taking weight with their necks. Now, why this is, nobody dares guess. The second caryatid from the right, there in front, is a fake. Lord Elgin had the original sawed out of the structure and taken to the British Museum. There are four terra-cotta caryatids on the back porch of the 1822 Saint Pancras Church in London, whose middles had to be sawn out to reduce their height. Miscalculation. Born to suffer, caryatids are.

The ancient Theatre of Dionysius in Athens also contains structurally integral figures, crouching male atlantes.

The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, built for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, has about three dozen uncomfortable-looking caryatid clones lined up on the facade. And Macy's has these four on the 34th Street entrance to their old Broadway store in Manhattan in a burst of pure originality.

So if you got the idea that there was some Greek-classical quoting going on around 1893, you wouldn't be far off.

They seem to break down into two categories. Some of 'em rise up out of the building like manifested spirits. Some of 'em ae eternally stuck holding up the building. The first tend to be figures of individuality and respect and wisdom, like Socrates and Hammurabi. The other ones are muscular structural slaves you wouldn't really want to open a conversation with. And it's useful to know that they usually come in pairs. Watch, there's a lot of pairs.

And just so we get the terminology straight:

"Altas", plural "atlantes", after the mythological Titan who held up the sky, refers to a load-bearing male figure, usually seen on his knees.

A "telemon" is a synonym for "atlas". In mythology Telamon was the father of Ajax, who in the myth built an altar to Heracles.

A load-bearing female is a "caryatid".

A "herm" (not making this up) is a head or bust that terminates into a tapered shaft. Plural hermai. Named after, for some reason, Hermes. Although they sometimes pretend to be holding things up, they don't look very effective.

But there doesn't seem to be a more general term for the integration of human form in architecture, or that Rodin-esque frisson of figures emerging from stone as if struggling to get out. And no word for that guardian-spirit levitating out of the stone as if he'd been there all along, waiting.

There's an allegorical strain here, too.

As a kid I used to be fascinated with statues of Justice, always equipped with blindfold and scales, and wonder if that implied a whole set of personifications always equipped with their standard props -- Publicity always with her megaphone, Hygiene always with her hypodermic needle and roll of toilet paper, Licentiousness always swinging her warm bra like a slingshot. And as a kid I wondered why these human manifestions of concepts (I didn't know the word 'allegorical' yet, and I still don't) often took the form of agreeable-looking women somewhere between 17 and 25. And now I know.

The allegorical group on top of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, carved by the French sculptor Jules Felix Couton in 1912, represents the Roman gods Hercules (strength), Mercury (speed), and Minerva (wisdom), and collectively represents "Transportation." I like how Minerva is having second thoughts.

The Vienna City Hall (Rathaus) was designed by Friedriech von Schimdt between 1872 and 1883. Its figural sculptures are not full-figure, and not integrated, but not exactly confined to their niches, either. According to German wikipedia, these statues represent figures like Heinrich II. Jasomirgott, Leopold VI, Rudolf IV, Niklas Graf Salm, Rüdiger Graf Starhemberg, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch und Joseph von Sonnenfels. All over the building, aren't they? Like a Gothic SWAT team.