A Centennial Face-Lift for a Beaux-Arts Gem (original) (raw)
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2007 Workers have been tapping crumbling stone off the New York Public Librarys main building on Fifth Avenue, starting a three-year restoration of the facade, stairs and plaza.Credit...Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
- Dec. 20, 2007
About four years ago, Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, began noticing the streaks blackening the marble facade of the Beaux-Arts main building when he walked into work each day.
Mr. LeClerc consulted experts, who told him that pollution and moisture were corroding the statuary ornament and wearing away the marble surface. Precious detail on the neo-Classical Carrère & Hastings building was disappearing, like the edges of elegant cornices and the features of carved faces.
Today, the library is to announce a plan of action: a three-year restoration of the facade, stairs and plaza that is to be completed in time for the building’s centennial in 2011. Already some of the building is shrouded with netting; the first scaffolding is to appear in February on the Bryant Park side of the building.
Not only does Mr. LeClerc want to return the library to its original white marble grandeur, he wants to celebrate the building as the landmark it is, one of the city’s leading examples of majestic classical-style architecture and yet a welcoming, democratic place.
“I’ve always said I want the library to be a crossroads in the city’s intellectual and cultural life,” Mr. LeClerc said. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has also been a partner in Mr. LeClerc’s effort to get the renovation right. On the library’s behalf, he wrote to the mayor of Paris asking him to lend the expertise of François Jousse, the city engineer responsible for lighting 300 monuments, official buildings, bridges and boulevards in the French capital.
The goal is to install lighting that will make the library an arresting spectacle at night.
“I think the illuminations they do in Paris are the best in the world,” Mr. LeClerc said. “My ambition is for this to be the building you simply must see in New York at nighttime because it is so beautiful and it is so important.”
The library has yet to decide whether to wash the entire structure with light or to focus on specific vertical elements, like its coupled Corinthian columns. “You have to decide at the outset what you want to say, what message you’re trying to communicate,” Mr. LeClerc said.
The city is contributing 30milliontowardthe30 million toward the 30milliontowardthe50 million renovation, with the rest of the money coming from federal, state and private sources. While the library is an independent nonprofit institution, the building is owned by the city.
The biggest challenge is cleaning the building’s Vermont marble, repairing nearly 3,000 cracks along with the roof, stairs and plaza and restoring the building’s sculptural elements.
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1907 The library in progress. When it was dedicated in 1911 after 12 years of construction, the neo-Classical Carrère & Hastings building was the nations largest marble structure.Credit...The New York Public Library Archives
The library is still weighing whether to try to return the sculptural details to their original appearance or to simply clean and then stabilize them.
Designed by John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings, the library was completed in 1911 after 12 years of construction. At the time, it was the largest marble structure in the United States.
The plan for the library was hatched in 1895, after former Gov. Samuel J. Tilden left $2.4 million to establish a free library and reading room in the city. A Tilden trustee arranged for the existing Astor and Lenox libraries to join forces and create a brand-new New York Public Library on the site of the Croton Reservoir, a popular two-block stretch of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets.
The restoration design has been overseen by WJE Engineers and Architects, whose previous projects include the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s limestone facades and the American Museum of Natural History, made of granite.
Being considerably more fragile, the library has posed a different set of challenges. Tiny particles of rubber scattered by passing car tires have accumulated on the building, mixing gradually with water to turn the marble to gypsum, which causes the outer layer to crumble in a sugaring effect.
Such deterioration does not ultimately threaten the building’s structure; the marble is about three feet thick, not a veneer on a steel framework building like Grand Central Terminal’s.
“This is a stone masonry building,” Mr. LeClerc said. “It’s marble and brick all the way through.”
The diagnostic work is largely done. Over the last several months, the engineers scaled the building from scaffolding or cherry pickers or rappelled down on ropes to examine every one of the 20,000 blocks of stone.
With hand-held devices, they mapped the building, numbering every piece of marble. They tapped the building with mallets, allowing loose pieces to fall (hence the netting that now wraps part of the exterior), and drilled core samples to study the material.
“They took off about 1,000 pounds of stone that was ready to come off,” Mr. LeClerc said.
Now, the library has to determine the best cleaning method: whether to use a laser method that zaps off the black sooty pieces or to apply poultices and then peel off the pollutants.
The main library also known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library has been gradually renovating its interior over the last 30 years, most recently restoring the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division space, with its richly carved wood, marble and metalwork, completed in December 2005.
“One can never take one’s eye off this building,” Mr. LeClerc said. “One can never take it for granted.”
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