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I've been upset walking around downtown. and finally decided to look up why. and why it has not been made into a bigger deal. primer. just incase anyone else has noticed a difference in our skyline:
July 24, 2005
A 90-Year-Old Turns a Little White on Top
BY JOHN FREEMAN GILL
It was as if the Statue of Liberty had applied liberal dabs of white eyeliner while no one was looking. Or as if the top of the Sony Building, which many have likened to a giant piece of Chippendale furniture, had suddenly gone Danish Modern.
In recent weeks, residents of TriBeCa and the City Hall area have gazed perplexedly at the landmark Woolworth Building: the 1913 tower's slanting rooftops, that distinctive swatch of green against the sky of Lower Manhattan, had inexplicably turned white. The color had drained from the great Gothic skyscraper's cheeks.
"I was out on my roof, on the deck with my son, Henry," said Matthew Baird, a TriBeCa architect. "I looked up, and I was shocked; I was disappointed."
Mr. Baird, like many New Yorkers, said he had always understood that the cladding of the Woolworth's rooftops was copper, and that they had turned green from its interaction with oxygen. Consequently, the white paint confused him.
But Roy Suskin, the vice president of development for 233 Broadway Owners L.L.C., which owns the building, said, "What everyone thought was copper hasn't been copper since before 1950."
One of the four richly ornamented towers near the building's top was formerly a coal-burning chimney, Mr. Suskin explained. As a result, "Acid rain pretty much ate through the roof pretty quickly, and since then it's been covered in a green protective coating that matches the patina of oxidized copper."
The mysterious white paint job, then, is primer. Mr. Suskin said that the roof had been repainted at least once before, in the 1970's, and that by the end of the summer, weather permitting, the roof would receive a fresh green top coat of Karnak waterproof coating, a substance approved for the work by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Mr. Suskin added, "We're doing the best we can with a 90-year-old building."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company------------------------------------------------------------------------