Restoring a Mural

[世岩 최삼송]

After two years of effort, a team of 30 conservators, technicians and artists is nearly finished refurbishing the gilt and gloriously polychromed 210-foot-long landmarked ceiling of the Verizon building, in downtown Manhattan. The ceiling suffered severe damage on Sept. 11, 2001.


The scaffolding will come down next month and, after more lobby reconstruction, the murals will be unveiled next year.


Verizon, still in negotiation with its insurers, declined to reveal the reconstruction bill, but preservationists estimate the cost at $2 million.


Technicians used hypodermic needles to inject acrylic resin and ethyl cellulose glue into crevices to reattach plaster and paint to the ceiling. Separately, workers painted 509 linear feet of floral decorative panels to replace the originals.



The 12 ceiling tableaux celebrate the history of human communication, offering everything from an Egyptian megaphone to West African drums. The artistic culmination, of course, is the great god of the telephone, as embodied by a painted classic `candlestick` receiver, cutting-edge in 1926, when the mural was created.