Daily News from New York, New York • 192

II GRAND CENTRAL'S WW II PHOTOS BY PETER B. KAPLAN Look! Up in the sky! It's clean! It's working! By the time you read this, the mammoth clock on 42d St. above Grand Central Terminal should be ticking off the minutes like a charm. Earlier this month, Metro North finished a one-year renovation of the gigantic timepiece (it's 12-feet-4-inches wide) and a face-lift of the largest group of figures ever to be placed atop a building the mythological characters Minerva, Mercury and Hercules. The Grand Central Partnership has done such a good job of illuminating the building that the 1,200 watts of light behind the Tiffany-style sunburst may need to be rethought, notes Wayne Ehmann, Metro North's chief architect.

Last cleaned in 1972, the clock hasn't been completely overhauled since its installation with the completion of Grand Central Terminal in 1913, Ehmann adds. Behind the clock's face, in a dusty crawl space filled with gears and planks, rectangles of white paper glimmer with 23-carat gold, leftovers of the gold leaf meticulously applied to the trim of the clock. "Between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., when the sun goes between the building on Park you can see the gold glistening that was not glistening for many years," says Ehmann. Gilding on the clock is quite fitting.

After all, says Ehmann, "Grand Central Terminal is the king or queen of landmarks." Sheila Anne Feeney it r- STILL TICKING: The teamwork of UBS Scaffolding, Brisk Waterproofing and Rohlf's Stain Leaded Glass Studios has restored Grand Central's 79-year-old Beaux Arts clock. 3 I U- 5 NEW YORK LIVE NOVEMBER 22, 1992 NEW YORK LIVE NOVEMBER 22, 1992.