I was looking at the twin-towered Majestic this morning - the 1931 building erected by Irwin Chanin, across the street from the Dakota.  Unlike the cast-stone lower floors of its very-near-relation the Century, at 62nd, the Majestic's are of limestone.

 

It has an unusual appearance, and I am not certain I have seen it on any other building in New York.  There are very fine, irregular erosion troughs, just lines really, all longitudinal, kind of like rain drops smearing across the porthole of your 300 mph jet liner.   They are not like beach stuff or wave action, like I see in other stone installations.

 

The lines are all parallel to the sidewalk, so they were installed with a knowledge of the actual graining. 

 

Have I described this adequately?  Kind of like someone took a very irregular comb across the surface, although they are clearl eroded, not mechanically made.  But I cannot imagine what the character or method of the original deposit was to subsequently allow this lines. This pattern appears on 9 out of 10 of the perhaps 300 blocks (typicall 4" deep, and perhaps 4 feet on a side).  What are they?

 

Christopher