New York's Sky High Squeegee Men

City’s new skyline boosts window-washers: One industry that has been quietly benefitting from the city’s increasingly glassy skyline is the window-washing industry. The New York Times reported that window washer services have been in higher demand of late, as professionals are needed to maintain the city’s growing population of tall steel and glass buildings.

Whereas windows in brick-clad buildings can usually be cleaned by an entrepreneurial superintendent from the inside, and the structures’ remaining facades are rarely scrubbed, glass and steel buildings present a completely different set of complications. They need to be washed about twice a year to avoid looking as though they’re covered with giant smudged finger prints, the Times said. The cost of cleaning their exteriors can run as high as $50,000 for jobs that require several weeks of work. (See a video below of window washers cleaning the exterior of the rising 1 World Trade Center.)

But some buildings take even longer. For example, the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle takes two crews about three months to clean, while the 76-story New York by Gehry tower at 8 Spruce Street in Lower Manhattan can take six to nine months to clean, depending on the weather.

See New York's Sky High Squeegee Men: Complainers moan about the increasing popularity of glass curtain walls and glass-heavy facades in recent New York architecture; but there's a group of men who won't complain about it, even as they're dangled out a high rise window to deal with it. Window washers [slideshow] are experiencing a boom period of demand as more glass towers go up in the city, according to the Times. Unlike masonry buildings that can be repointed or power washed every few decades, glass buildings need to be cleaned every two years, if not continuously, to prevent appearing like a gross scummy shower stall on a city block.

Because of demand for the work, the specialized equipment sometimes involved, and the probable desire to cut down on precarious learning curves, window washing can be a full-time job where union cleaners start at $26 an hour. The Times states that it takes about two months to clean the Time Warner Center, but six to nine months to clean New York by Gehry. Here's some video of the windows being cleaned at the new 1 WTC building, taken July of last year. Those windows need to be cleaned before the building is even topped out! 

It Takes Up to Nine Months to Clean Frank Gehry’s Wavy Spruce Street Apartment Tower: To be fair, it is (currently) the tallest residential building in the city. Still, the lengths to which the humble window washer must go to clean New York by Frank Gehry, the 76-story downtown apartment tower, are as extreme as the ripples in the buildings facade, according to The Times. It is a few floors taller than the Time Warner Center, sure, but smaller in overall size, and still, Steve Ross’ Columbus Circle colossus is cleaned in about one-third the time.

The Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle takes two crews about three months to clean, and New York by Gehry, a 76-story rental tower on Spruce Street with rippling stainless-steel siding, takes six to nine months, depending on the weather — cleaning crews will stay indoors if conditions are too windy, for example. (Extell Development Company declined to describe its plans for washing windows at its One57 project, which at 90 stories will be the tallest residential building in the city when it is completed.) No wonder nobody wants to pay for overwrought designs. From leaky ceilings to lugubrious window washing, why bother?