Wedding-cake style

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In architecture, a "wedding-cake style" is an informal reference to buildings with many distinct tiers, each set back from the one below, resulting in a shape like a wedding cake, that are richly ornamented with classicising detail, as if made in sugar icing. The British wedding-cake style was created by Sir Christopher Wren, who often placed a steeple at the top of a series of classically-details diminishing lower stages (illustration). In the United States, the style has been predominant in New York City, thanks to a former zoning code which forced buildings to reduce their shadows at street level by employing setbacks, resulting in a ziggurat profile. In Russia, the "wedding-cake style" supercharged with boldly-scaled classical detailing is a typical feature of Stalinist architecture.