Damaged by Hurricane Sandy, Verizon’s Jazz-Age Frescoes Glow Again

Hurricane Sandy damaged even what it could not touch.

Kumiko Hispano/EverGreene Architectural Arts Peeling paint is reattached by an adhesive brushed on to the chip.

The flooding last October was catastrophic enough at Verizon’s headquarters and switching center in Lower Manhattan. Water cascaded 90 feet below ground, fully submerging three of five subbasements. It reached four feet in the main lobby, a masterpiece of Jazz Age decorative art that’s an official city landmark. Water filled the elevator pits, too, knocking 22 of 23 cars out of service. Briefly, the 31-story tower was completely crippled.

Some of the 1,700 technical and administrative employees assigned there were unable to return until mid-January. “Our administrative people were scattered around the city,” said Dominic Veltri, Verizon’s director of network and technology critical facilities. “And our C.E.O. and C.T.O. Their office was standing with me on the corner for a few days.”

As the company began recovering from the worst of the destruction, it became clear that the flooding had even affected 12 monumental ceiling frescoes that depict communication from its most rudimentary forms to that pinnacle of technological evolution (circa 1926): the candlestick telephone.

Paint was peeling, flaking and blistering. And not for the first time. The frescoes had been badly damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center collapsed across Vesey Street. They were caked in dust, baked by the heat of the nearby fires, soaked in water from the firefighting and then exposed to the elements.

A two-year restoration followed. But the frescoes were degrading again from the buildup of salt deposits caused by fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and the nearby presence of exterior doors, air vents and heating grilles.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The central panel shows the triumph of the telephone, telegraph and radio.

The extreme conditions caused by Hurricane Sandy â€" diesel fumes from emergency generators; the presence of standing pools of salt water under the frescoes for days on end; and deposits of mud, sand and dust â€" made the situation that much worse.

So, for the second time in slightly more than a decade, the EverGreene Architectural Arts studio was called in to repair and stabilize the murals at 140 West Street.

Over four weeks in February and March, conservators and technicians clambered up pipe scaffolding to hot, cramped platforms 20 feet off the floor, where they could reach the ceiling surface. (Never mind the advances in communication technology, fresco work doesn’t seem to have changed much since the time of Michelangelo.)

Where paint had flaked away, they repainted. Where it was peeling from the surface but still hanging on, they brushed the paint chip lightly with an adhesive called Lascaux Hydrosealer 750 and reattached it. At the blisters, they injected the adhesive by syringe and gently massaged the paint back into a flattened state. A Verizon spokesman said the project cost about $160,000.

Gillian Randell, the chief conservator at EverGreene, who also worked on the post-9/11 restoration, said all the panels needed some attention but those on the east end of the building seemed hardest hit.

One of the conservators’ last stops was an 11-by-12-foot panel filled with vaguely Mesoamerican motifs. A description from the Telephone Review of September 1926, an in-house publication by New York Telephone (Verizon’s corporate predecessor), said about this panel:

“Primitive in his method is the Aztec runner, depicting the phase in communications when messages were sent exclusively by a courier on foot. The messenger method of communication is, of course, still in use, although the messenger, salesman or representative rarely travels on foot in these days when the railroad, automobile and aeroplane is utilized to speed the ways of the couriers of commerce.”

Other means of communication in the mural include smoke signals, beacons, carrier pigeons, signal flags, the megaphone, the drum, the heliograph and gunfire, “although very often the messages propelled from the mouth of a cannon contained something more material and destructive than a friendly greeting,” as the Telephone Review noted.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The platform on which conservators worked was 20 feet off the floor.

Though marvelous as an ensemble, and certainly exuberant, the panels â€" like many examples of American popular culture in the early 20th century â€" are not subtle in their depictions of nonwhite people and non-European cultures. The architect of the tower, Ralph Walker, is celebrated. But the muralist, Hugo R.B. Newman, is a bit obscure. A close inspection of his work may suggest why.

Unfortunately, a close inspection by the public is impossible. Verizon has been a conscientious steward of its historical property but the lobby â€" like many interior landmarks in the city â€" has been kept off-limits since 2001. A series of visits to downtown landmarks in 2006 found that Verizon headquarters was among the most aggressively patrolled.

“That’s good,” Mr. Veltri said when he learned this. “Then our folks were doing their job.” Given the presence under one roof of so many important functions, he said, there was no choice but to severely limit access.

“We’re curators of a gem here,” Mr. Veltri said. “We need to sustain what we have â€" even if it’s for our own employees.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Every square inch of the lobby is ornamented, and much of it was inundated.