a photo a day

beautiful old doors at teachers college...an entrance that is no longer usable, but i know the school thinks it's as beautiful as i do: two worker spent a week cleaning out the gunk in the intricate wood carvings around the edges.  here's a little from the TC website about it:

The doors, heavy and ornate, are 80 years old. Two members of Facilities’ trades staff, Mike Spratt and Rance Osborne, have removed some 30 or 40 coats of linseed oil and varnish formerly used for “cleaning.” The work has exposed a medallion bearing the TC shield, which was previously obscured beyond recognition. Spratt says he used only denatured alcohol to reveal the colorful shield (“anything else would have been disrespectful"), which says "Teachers College - Incorporated 1892." (The College was founded in 1887 as the Industrial Arts Association, briefly became known as the New York College for the Training of Teachers, and ultimately reincorporated under its current name five years later.) The shield, in turn, sits near the top of an intricate vertical panel that is inlaid with a magnificent carving of a tree – “probably the tree of life,” Spratt says. Because of the carving’s many twists and crevices, Spratt and Osborne are likely to be at their work for at least several weeks longer.