Friday, January 04, 2002


had the great opportunity yesterday to take an in-depth tour of the woolworth building, where i'm working now. . .

we got to see many features of the building not widely known to exist. for example, mr. woolworth, who was quite a character in that old-fashioned turn-of-the-century baronial way, had a marble swimming pool put in one of the four basement floors. rather roman in design, with a mosaic floor. recently, this part of the building was a little health club and the pool area was converted to modern standards; the gym went out of business and it's sad to see the dusty, empty pool, lying bereft.

he also had an apartment on the 40th floor, done in floor-to-ceiling aged mahogany wainscoting. the molding's in an egg-and-dart pattern. the ceilings of these rooms were carved and gilded plaster, clearly along the lines of those in the doges' palace in venice. only one room of this apartment remains as a reminder. the rest of the floor was cut up into tiny offices in the 1950s.

the building also has an observation deck, closed to the public since the second world war. the top of the deck has a light on it, and it was believed that german spies might sneak into the building and use the light to flash morse code signals to german submarines! it never reopened to the public afterwards. the regular elevators end at the 54th floor, and a round glass elevator with an intricate gilt wrought-iron gate took you up the last four stories to the deck. that elevator is mothballed now, sadly.

i conquered my paralyzing fear of heights just long enough to walk out onto the deck. but the wind began to blow and the deck swayed a bit. i immediately grabbed the closest bit of enameled terra-cotta gothic bric-a-brac i could find and held on for dear life. still, the view is amazing: even today you can see to ringwood state park in the ramapo mountains in new jersey and over to the control tower at la guardia airport. a beautiful view of the brooklyn bridge, as well. as for the view of ground zero -- let's talk about that later, ok? it was very moving.

we also got to see the mechanical sections of the building. the elevators are still operated by the original hand-built 1910 motors. each car has its own motor; these motors are each larger than a mini-van! since there are 20 elevators, the woolworth engineers are still maintaining 20 of these monsters, which isn't difficult, since each one still works perfectly. however, there is a machine shop in the building in which they have the ability to make their own parts for them should the need arise.

mr. woolworth loved electricity, and he made sure he had enough by installing his own giant steam turbines in the bottom floor. for many years the building made enough electricity that it sold much of it back to con-edison for a profit. to do this, the turbines were powered by coal-generated steam. the boiler room, about 1/2 the size of a football field, was lined with boilers and connected to a giant coal shaft with a door that swung out onto park place.

excess steam was used to heat the building; in fact, the building is still heated with city steam. the boiler room also features to this day a 8-ft-wide, 48-story chimney, the tallest in the world. many of these engineering wonders were replaced with more modern equipment in the 1950s.

the building facade, entirely terra-cotta, is under constant repair, or pointing. since modern air is hard on the terra-cotta, they nowadays cast replacements in a mix of fiberglass and terra-cotta, then enamel them to match the original pieces. perhaps the most amazing single fact about the building, besides its singular beauty and grace, is the fact that mr. woolworth paid $13 million in cold cash (in 1910 dollars) right on the table when the building contract was signed. one of the employees of the current owners, the witkoff group, estimated that that would be about $1 billion in today's dollars. mr. woolworth hated debt.

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