Met History wrote:

> This 8 story reinfored concrete frame building - with a veneer of thin
> marble panels - is going to be demolished or radically altered.   Does
> the marble have any salvage marble?  Or is 1960's marble just worked
> too thin?

Christopher,

This is like trying to figure out the economic value of the rain
forests. Assuming flat panels, the cost of labor to actually salvage in
a manner that leaves anything worthwhile may exceed the cost to purchase
new... particularly with all the Chinese marbles currently on the
market. Carved marble, on the other hand, may be worth something to
salvage. I heard a while back about an American working in China in the
Three Gorges area paying the locals to harvest all of the carved stone
that they can get their hands on for export to the US market. If the
Columbus Circle marble is a laminate on concrete panels, like w/ the GM
building, then it is not worth much of anything except for fancy
landfill (and it probably won't be consistent enough for engineered
compaction like w/ recycled concrete). It might make for a nice random
chunk walkway in a garden. It may be something of a pity all around as
the quality of newly quarried marbles degrades over time as the finer
stone tends to be quarried sooner and there is a finite supply... then
we get the lesser quality of stone to quarrry that was not harvested
early. The stone just don't grow back the way it used to. Recently
having to match a Carrara marble for the Hartford fireplace project
there was a problem getting a close match to the stone because the
Carrara of 100 years ago was more pure, with less veining, than what can
be got here today. I've been asked if I can patinate new marble
balusters to look 100 years old in order to blend them in to an existing
structure. My first inclination is to marinate them in black tea.

][<en

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