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Covered in White Brick, and Showing Their Age
By Diane Cardwell
October 3, 2011
New York Times, New York Edition
Over the decades, white brick buildings — those wedding-cake-shape stalwarts of postwar living — have fallen out of favor and in again among residents, architects and preservationists. Now some of them are falling apart.
Built in New York in the 1950s and ’60s, the buildings were part of the answer to the housing shortage touched off by returning veterans of World War II; the white glazed brick was supposed to make them look like beacons of clean, shiny modernism in the midst of the dirty city.
“Going back to the Woodstock era and the Age of Aquarius, an architect came up with this idea of a self-cleaning building where the rain would wash down this slick glazed brick and clean the facades,” said Howard L. Zimmerman, an architect with experience in restoring white brick.
In addition, the glazed bricks were supposed to keep the inner walls dry, repelling the moisture as it slid down the face.
...
Some see that status captured in the color of the brick itself; faced with maintenance issues, some buildings have even replaced their white bricks with red because of the perception among brokers that apartments in red brick buildings are more valuable. But Jonathan J. Miller, president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, said that while there was generally a 12 percent to 15 percent premium for prewar over postwar, there was no appreciable difference in value between the colors of brick, whether white, red, gray, pink, yellow or blue.
Others have chosen or been required to keep the color constant. At the Pavilion, which has needed only some of its bricks replaced, the owner, Glenwood, decided to use glazed brick to maintain the historic accuracy of its look, committing to constant vigilance over the condition of the millions of bricks there, Mr. Zimmerman said.
At 900 Fifth Avenue, where shareholders had wanted to use a gray or buff-colored brick, the landmarks commission insisted on white, but approved a brick that was flecked with black and slip coated, which mimics the smooth face of the original facade without dooming the building to more water damage.
Read the full article Covered in White Brink & Showing Their Age, at NYTimes.com.