In case you’re wondering what’s hidden above the drop ceiling tiles in my office

Here is a hint at what’s hidden above the drop ceiling tiles in my office.

There are at least four beautiful skylights above us, but those ugly speckled ceiling tiles keep them out of sight.  This one is partially visible in the stairwell, but it’s been covered with gunk and dust for as long as I’ve been here.

This week, the building service crew cleaned up the mess, and now you can almost see how pretty this building could be if people didn’t, like, work here.

Of course they tackled this project the week after Nick Paumgarten’s article on the social and mechanical history of elevators appeared in The New Yorker and the day after the video of Nicholas White’s forty-one hours trapped in Car No. 30 in the McGraw-Hill building was linked on Gothamist.

While the skylight stairwell was closed for cleaning, everyone on my floor had to use the rickety little single-floor service elevator to get up to or down from “the penthouse.”  In the lobby on the floor below us, we wait for one of the building’s main elevators.  More than once I heard, “I’m just going downstairs to the ladies’ room.  If I’m not back in ten . . . “