![]() When the contractor, Key Restorations, emailed pictures of the exposed terra cotta to the property manager, he knew it was a major discovery. “They could see beautiful verdigris tiles underneath. ![]() “When the workers started doing the facade work – scraping away old black paint – they noticed that the decorative terra cotta tiles were flaking,” says board president Diana Revkin, a studio director in an architecture firm who moved into the 38-unit building in 2003 and joined the board two years ago. Some money also came from the co-op’s healthy reserve fund. The total bill would come to about $400,000, money that was on hand thanks to flip taxes and a refinancing of the underlying mortgage. But when the board got ready to tackle their mandated Local Law 11 repairs last summer, they weren’t expecting anything out of the ordinary – a mix of “Safe with Repair” work that had come due from the last inspection cycle, plus some new repairs that needed to be addressed immediately. ![]() Ten stories tall and adorned with large leaded-glass casement windows, it was designed by the legendary architect Rosario Candela and built in 1929, as his most productive years were coming to an end and the national economy was on the brink of collapse. The five members of an Upper West Side co-op board never doubted that they lived in an exceptional building. It led to the discovery and preservation of a lost gem of New York City’s architectural history. It started out as a routine Local Law 11 facade-repair job.
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