Plant hater --or better yet, tree hater--isn't a bad description of me.
Trees block the view of the building, see, plus they have roots which break
up your sidewalk, and ya hafta pay some tree person to trim the damn trees,
and rake the leaves (unless you live on the exclusive East Side, or in The
Dakota, where you have your manservant do all those things).

We had some ivory on some wealthy person's terrace at 740 Park Ave, which as
I remember was long gone by the time we fooled with the limestone facade in
1990-91, but it's dead suckers (or the seemingly more benign "little pads"
[perhaps akin to bun feet?]) were still there and put up a hell of a fight
when we tried to remove the little bastards.  High pressure water didn't wash
em off, I don't think bristle brushes worked, and it seems to me we had to
very carefully use stainless steel brushes and/or hand scraping (at the risk
of permanently scratching the stone, either way) to do the job.  I remember
picking at the little things with my own personal fingers, and you'd get a
little micro vine off, but leave these pinhead- [not Pinhead-] sized suckers
behind.

There was a house around the corner from me in Joisey City-- at 97 Summit
Avenue, to be precise, or if you want to take your life in your hands-- where
the ivory had grown into the walls, behind cornices, as I remember through
windows, etc., and this had been a wonderful late 1880's house built by a
(State) Senator.  I also saw long-dead ivory at a building at SUNY Syracuse,
with rope-sized vines and lots of schmutz on the precast(?) walls.  Yeah,
yeah, I know --neither of those are in Manhattan for the locals to see
without leaving your provincial little island.  However, those afraid to
leave the Center of the Known Universe (except to cross the Pond for a visit
to the rustics in Italy and London) might have their chauffeurs drop them off
for a look at the Arsenal in Central Park and see what's going on there--I
know it's got ivory all over it, but haven't made a close inspection.

Hey-- isn't ivory illegal?  Maybe we can get the Feds to confiscate it all.

Which reminds me....as I remember my personal aversion to ivory began as a
yout' in Culver City, where I observed that the neighbors' ivory harbored
jillions of snails, and not being a Francophile or otherwise Urban
Sophisticate, I thought snails were disgusting, leaving those little snot
trails all over the place.

Ralph

Ralph