Leland Torrence wrote:

> Do you have Color Matching Police in New York?  How many of the colors 
> do they have to match – just the black and white ones?
>
It wld prbly be up to the LPC staff to police the color match.

We had a situation years back in which we had to do a color match to 
what was a sand stucco over brownstone on an attached townhouse in 
Brooklyn. The historic material, the brownstone, had already been 
replaced with a non-historic material - the sand stucco. Problem we had 
was that the grains of sand that were weather exposed where a distinctly 
different color than the tinting in the cement matrix. If you stood 
close to the wall your eye could not blend the two colors, but if you 
stood in the street the two colors would blend.

The LPC staff was in a fix because no matter what color we put on the 
stucco it was a monotone and it reflected sunlight different than the 
stucco. Then there is the problem to match in sunlight and to match in 
shade. Every time we put up samples the anonymous histo presto conscious 
neighbor that I can only assume had a greivance against the property 
owners would call up the LPC and complain that the colors did not match. 
It did not help that one round of samples the manufacturer did not put 
any tint in the quart cans and the idiots that we sent down to put up 
the samples never thought twice about it. When there are too many things 
going on and everyone is stressed and overloaded this happens (like the 
time we painted the cast iron building the wrong color.)

We tried matching the colors to the two adjacent attached facades but 
that did not settle it. Seems to me when you already have a fake 
material on a facade to be so anal about color matching there needs to 
be something else going on than color matching. One could say that we 
had pissed of the LPC, but that was not the case. What they needed, and 
what I have found out numerous times, was a way to get them off the 
hook. Sometimes individual staffers have too much book sense and not 
enough common sense. But they are also incredibly overloaded with too 
many projects to look over. After a while they wear down and either 
morph into more quiet and meek compromisers, or they get the sense to 
move on to another job. They are not paid all too well to begin with for 
the amount of abuse that they have to take from irrate property owners 
and developers who can go so far as to consider the LPC obstructionist 
meddlers in their property rights. It also depends a whole lot on the 
politics of the current Mayoral administration. And so, color matching 
is politics.

This particular brownstone was supposed to be a straight foward 
'breathable' coating job like a whole bunch of them that we had done in 
the past. There was not a whole lot of money in it for extensive museum 
level investigations. It dragged on for months. New samples, new visits 
by LPC staff, new samples, new visits by LPC staff. The manufacturers 
lose patience after you have asked for a whole bunch of quart samples 
(this was not Mr. Edison that we were dealing with). What they are 
geared for is a quick turn around but not for troubleshooting. I was 
beginning to think that we needed to bring in color experts with 
equipment. The human eye is subjective when it comes to color matching. 
I was searching for color experts. Bringing in a color expert has less 
to do with color matching than it has to do with bringing in someone 
with the credentials to prevail in a judgement and to shut everyone else 
up. They may be no more able to arrive at a color match than somone with 
a 7th grade education, but if they have enough paper trail behind them 
it provides a theatrics of shock and awe.

The property owner got more and more agitated until there were threats 
of legal action. Eventually the LPC staff relented on one of our color 
matches and we coated the building. Though it was a one-off situation to 
begin with we never heard from that client again.

It was experience such as this that led me as a contractor (point and 
shoot, ask questions later) to the conclusion that on ALL residential 
projects to insist that the property owner has an experienced histo 
presto architect on board.

][<

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