FacadeMD’s Jeremy Edwards is leading preservation of the Woolworth Building’s facade

When architect Cass Gilbert designed the Woolworth Constructing, his intention was to point out off the constructing’s 792-foot metal construction. The progressive steel-cage building, a significant engineering feat on the time, would safe the constructing’s standing because the world’s tallest constructing for over a decade after its 1913 opening. In order to not detract from this expertise, he clad the constructing in limestone and glazed terra-cotta in order that nobody would suppose the skyscraper was, as Gilbert mentioned, “pretending to be a masonry constructing.”

The tower’s gentle cream facade, enlivened with intricate, neo-Gothic ornamentation, definitively units it aside from the uninteresting grey of the masonry buildings that Gilbert rejected. Nonetheless, the Woolworth’s coloration in addition to the fragility of porous terra-cotta has meant that the facade has required close to fixed upkeep throughout its 112 years of existence. Virtually instantly after its completion, employees needed to scramble up scaffolding—or be lowered down on cleansing rigs—to clean layers of metropolis grime off the constructing’s facade and make beauty repairs. Immediately, restoration efforts proceed, however now a brand new era is stewarding the landmarked constructing’s future.

Such Nice Heights

Jeremy Edwards is the 29-year-old challenge supervisor tasked with main the newest spherical of facade restoration on the tower. Once we met, he was carrying a corduroy blazer over his work garments, a tough hat stowed within the criminal of his elbow. Usually the youngest particular person on website, Edwards strikes with the quiet assurance of somebody who holds all of the keys to the constructing. The Woolworth’s safety guards, notoriously strict on interlopers hoping for a peek of the foyer’s iconic, landmarked ceilings, waved us via. One added: “Should you’re with him, you possibly can go anyplace.”

Quickly after, we had been standing exterior on a terrace on the twenty eighth flooring peering over a ledge on the stomach-dropping view towards Park Place far under. “It doesn’t really feel such as you’re that top up,” Edwards noticed. He spends his days scaling the constructing’s street-facing partitions in a harness on a suspended rig, inspecting each single terra-cotta facade part. As soon as he identifies a restore or substitute that have to be made, he attracts up the development paperwork that provoke the method of restoration carried out by a wider staff of terra-cotta fabricators, masonry-restoration companies, scaffold contractors, and different specialists.

In dialog, Edwards in contrast the composition of Woolworth’s facade to that of a painted balloon. As soon as the balloon begins to increase and contract, as any constructing’s metal skeleton inevitably does, cracks can rapidly seem on its outer layers. “Typically the terra-cotta can’t face up to the compressive forces,” Edwards defined. 

He famous that having a holistic method to restoration is essential for buildings like this one: “It is perhaps cracking in a single space, however that power is so excessive that when you contact one half, one other piece would possibly break someplace far above it.”

Edwards’s documentation course of is break up into 57 vertical sections of the constructing facade, or “drops,” and may take greater than six months. The present cycle is slated to be accomplished in November. In Edwards’s discipline workplace, on an unleased flooring of the constructing, drawings are pinned as much as overview progress, post-shift gear is stacked in piles, and terra-cotta items sit idly, till Edwards grabs one as an instance some extent. Elsewhere on the ground, security traces are tied off round drywalled columns earlier than capturing out open home windows.

Facade Upkeep Design (or FacadeMD), the corporate Edwards works for, has held the contract for the constructing’s facade inspection since 1987. The inspection takes place each 5 years to align with the required timing via New York Metropolis’s Facade Inspection and Security Program (FISP).

For FacadeMD president Rick Lefever, the Woolworth Constructing has at all times been a matter of delight and, in consequence, legacy. “It’s extremely gratifying to be entrusted with the care of this iconic construction, and we now have tailored our design method as restoration expertise has developed,” he instructed AN. “I used to be delighted once I positioned the memento reward from the constructing’s one centesimal anniversary gala on my desk, subsequent to the memento reward from the seventy fifth anniversary.”

Maybe that’s why he acknowledged a successor in Edwards. “In the future, after touring the constructing, my boss [Lefever] requested me how a lot I knew about terra-cotta,” Edwards recalled. At the moment, Edwards was 27 and had been an worker on the agency for 3 years, a few of these whereas working towards finishing a grasp’s diploma in sustainability on the Metropolis School of New York. (At FacadeMD, Edwards’s title can also be chief sustainability officer.) “I instructed him that I knew a bit, and Rick mentioned, ‘I’m going to provide you this constructing.’”

Preservation’s Local weather Future

Regardless of preservation’s preoccupation with the previous, Edwards is within the potentialities that facade restoration holds for the longer term, particularly in reshaping how we take into consideration the constructed surroundings. In his position, Edwards is accountable for the constructing’s compliance with FISP. However past the essential activity of inspection, he sees a brand new alternative to deliver facade upkeep right into a broader local weather dialog, particularly in gentle of Native Legislation 97—this units carbon caps for buildings over 25,000 sq. toes to realize the Metropolis’s net-zero targets; the primary spherical of reviews are due by the tip of this yr.

“There’s a kind of synergy occurring between this restoration and this new local weather legislation,” he defined. “For each restore, there’s an embodied carbon worth connected to the restore.”

Many of the unique 7,500 tons of terra-cotta used to assemble the Woolworth Constructing had been manufactured in New Jersey and Staten Island by Atlantic Terra Cotta Firm. “All of the items had been hand-pressed after which fired in a kiln. That burning course of prompted quite a lot of emissions, so there’s quite a lot of baked-in vitality used to create this constructing that will get extinguished each time you are taking out a bit,” Edwards mentioned. His intention is to scale back the quantity of recent carbon emissions by emphasizing restore over substitute, which additionally preserves the authenticity of the unique facade material. Since he’s taken over the method this yr, the staff has but to make a substitute.

A better have a look at the Woolworth’s facade reveals a patchwork of fabric. The constructing’s higher 30 flooring obtained a $22 million facade restoration in 2021, together with the recasting of unique ornamental tiles, when Alchemy Properties renovated them into luxurious condos. Elsewhere, elements of the constructing are barely darker, a results of the cast-concrete replacements made by different facade professionals to unique terra-cotta parts. Extra updates are more likely to include the renovation of the constructing’s 5-floor penthouse, which was bought by artwork collector and entrepreneur Scott Lynn for $30 million in 2023.

Edwards usually displays on his sudden stewardship of the Woolworth Constructing’s facade, and he frequently takes to LinkedIn to share his ideas, sketches, and findings. The facade’s patchwork state is emblematic of the constructing’s wealthy materials reminiscence; Edwards’s work displays the continuing legacy of upkeep that he’s now carrying ahead excessive above Broadway, one drop at a time.