"This is One Hell of a Building"

After last night's meeting, I hung around a bit to talk to P---, the building owner who was part of the rebuilding team of 90 West. An architect by trade, P--- first saw the building just after September 11th, when it was completely enshrouded in scaffolding. The damage to such a beautiful building was heartbreaking, but when he was taken up to the 21st floor and shown the detail and sculpture on the facade he knew it was worth any investment. Here are a few other fascinating facts about the building that I learned from P---.

Since the building is in the flood plane of the Hudson River (which is actually an estuary around NYC), the entire building is built upon under-water wooden piles. On top of these rest the steel columns encased in terra cotta block.

Originally, Cass Gilbert (the designer of 90 West, and later the Woolworth Tower) intended there to be an elaborate clock tower rising from the middle front of the building.

The gargoyle that guards our mailboxes is one of the three original gargoyles of that type remaining. Before P--- and his team took over the building, there was a very low-budget rebuilding planned. Part of that scheme involved recasting all of the sculptured gargoyles in fiberglass and then painting them to look like granite. So they sent one of the three intact gargoyles to a fiberglass facility. When P---'s group took over, they decided to rebuild everything using the original materials. They employed hundreds of granite carvers from Buffalo, NY all the way to northern Italy. And when they replaced all of the gargoyles atop the building, they learned of this one other original gargoyle at the fiberglass facility. So they shipped it back and installed it in the lobby.

In the northeast corner of the lobby is the only original 1907 terra cotta pilaster left. All the others were damaged or destroyed in the 70's when the building (an office building at the time) acquired its "modern" lobby. By the time P---'s group decided to restore the lobby to its 1907 splendor, no one knew if there was anything left of the original lobby. P--- told me last night of pulling down the northeast wall of the "modern" lobby and discovering the original terra cotta pilaster. He said it was "like opening Tut's tomb." They cast that pilaster and used it to recreate the rest of the pilasters around the lobby. But you can still tell which one is the original, it even feels different from the others to the touch.

The gargoyles around the 16th floor, which are just heads with faces, were all lost in the 9/11 damage. P---'s team recast them, but having no faces to reference, they took a note from Cass Gilbert's book and put themselves into the gargoyles. You'll find P---'s face up there, as well as his nephew, and many other of the leaders of the restoration project.

On the roof of the building are three recreated granite griffins, all facing the WTC out of respect. There is also a plaque commemorating the two people who died in the elevator during the 9/11 attacks.

P---, as I said before, loves this building. His face lights up at the chance to talk about it's structure, design, history--everything. He even offered to take me on a tour of the more interesting elements of the building when all this mess is behind us. I cannot wait to take him up on that.

"This is one hell of a building," he said.