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THEY STARTED FALLING apart at the same time, the City of New York and the Municipal Building - maybe even at the exact same moment. A large chunk of granite from one of the world's largest government buildings broke loose, bounced off a ledge and smashed through a window into the office of the comptroller of one of the world's most unruly cities. The comptroller was not at his desk. Shortly thereafter, the city almost went bankrupt.
The government recovered, more or less. And the Municipal Building, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has begun a four-year, $60 million renovation to correct the damage from 75 years of wind and rainwater, which have rusted its steel skeleton and loosened its mortar, eroded its granite facade and dislodged some of its ornamental terra cotta cladding. In a city of superlatives, a New York contractor recently surrounded the Municipal Building with what the mayor called "the world's largest scaffolding." As the millennium peters out, this is a city that now boasts of its own decay.
Let tourists think Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty. The Municipal Building - at One Centre Street, straddling Chambers Street, towering beside the Brooklyn Bridge, hugging City Hall - is the city in several ways.
It is the city not just as a metaphor - although it is certainly that, from Civic Fame (the name of the statue at the very top) right down to the stressful rumble underneath (six subway tracks where the basement would be).
The Municipal Building is where the money is. For 75 years, the city has collected its taxes there. Recently it started collecting parking fines there, too: A private landlord threw out the Parking Violations Bureau because its angry clients kept beating up on his elevator. Now the PVB is in the Municipal Building, on the first floor.
In the Municipal Building, the city also figures out how to spend all the money it has collected there.
Six thousand city employees work there, several commissioners, the Manhattan borough president, the city clerk, a couple of dozen agencies: nearly a million square feet of city business, one-ninth of all the office space the city government owns - for a total rent of $600 a year....