Tin ceilings install#

Elizabeth GlasgowĬloser to home, it’s not unusual to find original tin decor in buildings around Soho and Tribeca where the technique first took root. It was once owned by the sister of poet Walt Whitman, who stayed there. Once owned by Walt Whitman’s sister, Mary Elizabeth Van Nostrand, the home played host to the famed poet when he was working on “Leaves of Grass.” ON THE MARKET: 218 South St., Greenport, NY, a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house over 1,900 square feet in a charming village on Long Island’s North Fork, has tin ceilings as well as exceptionally rare tin walls. on the market for $649,000 from Janet Markarian at Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty - not only has pressed tin ceilings in the living room but pressed tin walls, too. If embellishment is what you’re looking for, another place to find it is out in Greenport, on Long Island’s North Fork. Not only is a ceiling like this “retro chic,” Lopez says, but it harkens back to an era when “surface ornament was prized, not disdained.” Brilliant unpainted pressed copper ceilings were added by the current owners in 2001. 69th St., repped by Elliman’s Dexter Guerrieri and currently listed for $8.65 million. Tin wasn’t a common feature in 19th-cenutury single-family townhomes, but it now lines the kitchen ceiling at 131 W. This allure means that tin is sometimes installed during recent renovations. Smith-Goldstein says the ceiling is their “favorite feature of the apartment.” Combined with an “exposed brick wall, it straddles the boundary between old-world charm and modern design.” After finding minor damage, they had “the entire area scraped and sealed” and “it has been maintenance-free since” making it the perfect material for a muggy WC.

While traditional tin ceilings were painted white, the bathroom of their apartment features a pressed metal ceiling that shines. Their two-bedroom co-op was asking $995,000 and went into contract on March 25. Goldstein and Melissa Smith-Goldstein kept the pressed metal ceiling in their Chelsea bathroom unpainted for a luminous effect. (It went into contract on March 25 after 111 days on the market). on the market for $995,000 with Josh Rubin of Douglas Elliman. Goldstein, 62, an orthopedic spine surgeon, and Melissa Smith-Goldstein, 59, an author and instructor at Rutgers Business School, have listed their two-bedroom, one-bathroom co-op at 223 W. Whether it is newly installed or historically preserved, decorative metal makes a good investment. In the building trades, this material was generally called “terne metal.” Now, of course, lead is absent from panels, which “now use a galvanized coating of almost pure tin” over steel. Lopez also notes that “tin” is a bit of a misnomer: “Old tin ceilings were actually ‘tinned’ ceilings,” which means that “they were made of steel coated with an amalgam of lead and tin to inhibit rust.”

Tin ceilings install#

The reaction wasn’t always positive: “When I first opened the store 24 years ago,” he says, “I’d hear either ‘Charming!’ or ‘Ugh, tin!’ ” Today, however, he notes that reactions are “all positive.” When he moved a wall in his eclectically designed one-bedroom apartment, for example, he “added some tin molding to the room to make is seem like it was always there.” The modular nature of modern tin ceilings makes it easy to “add and subtract” new pieces.Īrt historian, author and former contractor Jonathan Lopez, 49, who has worked with both modern and vintage pressed-tin ceilings, points out that the ceilings today are much easier to install than in the material’s heyday, when teams of workers had to lift heavy rolls. Tastemaker John Derian, 56, the decoupage artist and home decor expert, has tin ceilings in both his East Village shop at Six E. John Darien’s tinny apartment Annie Wermiel/NY Post And while cast iron never really caught on outside the city, tin ceilings - which could be ordered by the roll from catalogs from manufacturers in the city - soon swept the nation.

Soon, the Broadway shopping district became a destination for both well-heeled New Yorkers and out-of-town visitors. Inside these buildings, tin ceilings similarly proved to be a less expensive, more durable - and fireproof - replacement for plaster. (The alternative was expensive stone, like limestone or marble.) From the 1850s onward, developers erected cast-iron facades along southern Broadway, which provided a cost-effective way for architects to provide elegance on a budget. But tin ceilings came of age in industrial Soho and other downtown neighborhoods in spaces ranging from shops and factories to the secret lairs of anarchists. Today, people view the geometrically embossed covering with rosy nostalgia. New York’s mot beloved architectural innovation might be among its most overlooked: the humble tin ceiling.