Quote:
Originally Posted by City Wide
I'm feeling old in as much as I still my "Free Billy" tee shirt. The tower was wrapped in scaffolding like forever, maybe back in the 90's. The problems were money and knowledge; during the restoration 'they' had to write the book. I'm pretty sure the metal is mostly cast iron. Parts of it had to be replaced during the restoration. The story goes, either A. stone would have cost too much hence the iron, or B. stone would have weighted too much, hence the iron, but I'm not that old that I know from being there! But based on the concept that the tower was designed to be all stone, the idea was the first layers of paint tried to match the color of the stone. I remember when I first moved to Philly in the mid 70's the metal section was dark and the tower had rust running down it in many spots. And yes I very clearly remember the engineers running the job decided on a epoxy style paint, the manufacture had 3 stock colors and grey was picked. Later the Inky did an article where they tracked down the manufacture, who claimed he had no idea what the paint was going to be used for, and also claimed that for such an national significant job they would have been thrilled to make a special color. The enclosed link says otherwise.
http://www.tnemec.com/project/view/?j=337
To give you some idea how important and huge our City Hall is: (the bestest building in the City!)
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/a...gn/25hall.html
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I moved into the (then) brand new One Franklin Town Apartment Building in 1989. I was in the 20th floor, eastern side, so I had a front row view of not only the restoration of City Hall, but also the construction of Vine Street Expressway (so much dust and dirt). I remember hearing that they analyzed the original paint underneath all the dirt and the color they chose was as close to the original as they could get. I have most of this on video (I bought my first camcorder in 1988, and was filming everything when I moved back into Center Cityin 1989 (I first moved in when I started Drexel in 1982).
Quite a fun time, back then. If you wanted to travel from Woody’s to Kurt’s, you literally took your life in your hands by walking from 13th and Walnut to 13th and Chestnut. Scarey.
Anyway, I enjoy watching those old tapes of the rebirth of CC back in the 80’s. I also took pictures as One Liberty Place was going up from Rittenhouse Square in ‘86. It took them forever to finish the upper floor glass.