Re-roofing the Historic Main Natural History Building

We were asked to investigate materials and methods, then prepare construction documents to reroof the historic main Natural History building, including the slate-roofed dome, hip, and mansard sections.

The Museum originally anticipated replacing the fish-scale slate on the building’s iconic Guastavino Dome. The scales graduate from over an inch thick and 30” tall to something more like normal shingle size at the top.

Surveying every single dome shingle, we found the lower courses of the very large, thick shingles were sound and only the top fourth of the dome slates were broken and leaking, mostly from people walking on them when they worked on the skylight at the dome oculus.