The Mount Vernon shop that restored the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig plaques now brings all eight of its restoration disciplines to Bronx owners, boards, and architects from one facility minutes north of the borough line
One of the bronze plaques honoring Babe Ruth, restored by Metal Man Restoration for the New York Yankees and Skanska Construction Corporation. Photo: Metal Man Restoration.
MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. Metal Man Restoration, an architectural metal and stone restoration shop in Mount Vernon, New York, has expanded its service coverage for the Bronx. Building owners, co-op and condo boards, and architects working in the borough can now bring every one of the company’s eight restoration disciplines to a single shop, under one assessment for metal restoration in the Bronx.
Those disciplines are architectural metal, chandeliers and architectural lighting, plating, hardware, steel casement windows, cast iron radiators, stone, and ongoing cleaning and maintenance.
The company’s facility sits immediately north of the borough line, which makes the Bronx one of the closest places it works. That proximity matters on the kind of job where a radiator has to be picked up, stripped, refinished, and returned, or where a survey has to happen before a board meeting.
Bronx Work Already on the Record
The company’s best-known Bronx project is not a recent one. In April 2008, the New York Yankees and Skanska Construction Corporation hired Metal Man Restoration to restore the bronze plaques honoring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, displayed at Babe Ruth Plaza and the Bronx County Courthouse.
The plaques arrived so heavily coated in old paint, dirt, and grime that they were first mistaken for cast iron. Solid bronze sat underneath. The shop returned them to their original statuary bronze finish and sealed them with a protective clear coating. The Bronx Zoo is also on the company’s client list.
A Borough Built in One Era
The Bronx presents a consistent set of problems because so much of it went up in the same decades. Art Deco apartment houses line the Grand Concourse. Nineteenth-century row houses fill Mott Haven and Longwood. Riverdale and Fieldston hold freestanding homes, and the borough is dense with houses of worship, schools, and civic buildings.
That consistency means the same conditions recur building to building: cast iron buried under decades of paint, plating worn through at the touch points, steel casement seized in its frames, and lobby metal and stone gone dull.
New York City’s protected building stock, as designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Much of that stock carries legal protection. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission reports more than 38,000 landmark properties citywide, most of them inside one of 157 historic districts and historic district extensions, along with 1,470 individual landmarks, 125 interior landmarks, and 12 scenic landmarks.
Mott Haven was the first historic district the commission designated in the Bronx, in 1969. Grand Concourse, Fieldston, Riverdale, Longwood, Clay Avenue, and Morris Avenue followed.
Protection changes the sequence of a project. Property owners and their architects must apply for a permit from LPC before doing certain kinds of work affecting the exterior or interior of designated landmark properties. Metal Man Restoration helps owners and architects confirm a building’s status and align the restoration with the applicable standards before work starts.
All eight restoration disciplines run out of one Mount Vernon facility, so finishes match across a building. Source: Metal Man Restoration.
Why One Shop Matters on a Prewar Building
A prewar Bronx building rarely needs one thing. The lobby marble, the entrance bronze, the apartment hardware, the radiators, and the steel windows all age on the same schedule.
Splitting that across four vendors produces four assessments, four schedules, and finishes that do not quite agree with one another. Keeping it with one shop means the entrance bronze and the apartment hardware come back the same color.
“A Bronx building tells you what it needs if you look at all of it at once,” said Anthony M. Guglielmo, president of Metal Man Restoration. “We would rather walk a whole building than quote one radiator, because the radiator is almost never the only thing that has been sitting there for eighty years.”
Work is split between the shop and the site. Facades, railings, stone floors, and fixed metal are handled on-site. Hardware, radiators, lighting, and anything that needs plating come back to Mount Vernon.
Service details for the Bronx, along with contact information and the company’s project photographs, are available at mmresto.com.
About Metal Man Restoration
Metal Man Restoration is an architectural metal and stone restoration company based in Mount Vernon, New York, serving the Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester County, and the wider tri-state area. The shop restores architectural metal, chandeliers and lighting, hardware, cast iron radiators, steel casement windows, marble and terrazzo, and provides plating and ongoing maintenance programs. Past projects include the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig plaques for the New York Yankees, Newark City Hall, the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, the Beacon Theatre, and Yale University’s Harkness Tower. Learn more at mmresto.com.
Media Contact
Anthony M. Guglielmo
Metal Man Restoration
(914) 662-4218
mmresto.com
