Costantino Nivola’s Play Horses
Image Credit: Ola Wilk
Location
New York, NY
Services
Materials
Concrete
Awards
2024 do.co,mo.mo_us, Modernism in America Awards, special Citation for Art Preservation
2024 International Concrete Repair Institute Metro New York Award of Excellence (Concrete)
2024 International Concrete Repair Institute Award of Merit, Historic Category
After a water main break, 18 concrete horse sculptures designed by artist Costantino Nivola were removed from the plaza of a public housing project located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In their haste to remove the sculptures, workers severely damaged them, cutting off the horses at the legs. The horses also suffered damage from vandals who had previously smashed off their muzzles.
JBC was hired by the housing project’s developer, PACT Renaissance Collaborative, to repair the damage and restore the horses to the plaza. The work entailed devising a repair system that would retain as much of the original artwork as possible, match the appearance of the existing concrete, match the original profiles and dimensions, and resist the wear and tear of children playing on the sculptures. Missing elements were faithfully replicated by taking molds from another group of horse sculptures by the same artist. The molds were used to recast the missing muzzles and legs directly on the sculptures. New internal reinforcement was added to the muzzles to secure the repairs and prevent future damage. New rebar to support the leg repairs was carefully welded onto the cutoff end of existing rebar. The original concrete mixes, pigmented in three colors, were analyzed and replicated with the colors adjusted to account for fading and discoloration that had occurred on the sculptures’ surface. After the repairs were cast and molds removed, the repairs were hand tooled to blend them with adjacent surfaces and provide a weathered appearance. While formed-in-place concrete repairs are not unusual in buildings and other structures, recasting sculptural elements in place has few precedents. Ultimately, this technique allowed for repairs that remained true to the artist’s original design while providing the durability necessary to withstand the elements and playful children for years to come.
Project Scope
Conditions assessment of 18 horse sculptures
Petrographic analysis and non-destructive testing
Conservation treatment plan
Cleaning
Concrete mix replication
Mold making and modelling
Welding repairs
Cast in-place sculptural concrete repairs
Supervised reinstallation
Play horses after conservation and reinstallation.
Nivola’s play horses (foreground) and sgraffito mural (background) in 1965. (Credit: Humphrey Sutton/NYCHA)
Wise Towers play horses in storage following their removal from the plaza with their hooves, still embedded in fragment of the plaza topping slab, in the foreground.
Photo-documentation of a horse sculpture showing typical damage.
Fiberglass versions of Nivola's play horses discovered at a school in Columbus, Indiana.
Color development sample preparation for mix replication.
A discolored pink fragment from a gray horse (left) compared to a replica sample (right).
A silicone mold made from one of the fiberglass horses found in Indiana.
Creating a mold of a horse muzzle for re-casting missing muzzles in-place.
New threaded stainless steel rod is welded onto the original rebar in an inverted horse sculpture.
Molds applied to an inverted horse to recast the sawn off legs.
Horse installation diagram created to replicate the original layout.
Reinstallation of the horses in the plaza.
Four of the 18 horses restored and reinstalled.