Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 52

9rit 16 0 V0 018915 05701. 1264 FRET BY GIL IDE. Up ILA that resurrecting historic damaged on was of heart 'You owe it to the building to be true to Architect William Collins of Setauket, left, whose firm restored Verizon's Art Deco building, from the rubble, right, of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 Setauket firm found Art Deco building A work William Collins first encountered the iconic skyscraper at 140 West St. in lower Manhattan historic home of New York Telephone Co.

on his first job as a young architect in the 1970s. It was a decidedly modest assignment. "They sent me down to this building to measure two floors," said Collins, founder of William F. Collins, AIA Architects in Setauket. Almost 30 years later, he would return to resurrect the entire building after it was trashed by the collapse of the Twin Towers and the adjacent 7 World Trade Center.

One of the first Art Deco buildings in New York, 140 West was crushed on the east side, and its landmark lobby had partly disintegrated from debris, smoke and water damage. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when Collins and his firm went into crisis mode to preserve the 32-story structure now owned by Verizon Communications, its oldest client, the team has won six historic preservation awards for the $325-million restoration. Collins said he doesn't remember who called whom the day the planes struck the Twin Towers. The architectural firm responded immediately.

"It really went beyond a job," Collins said during a recent tour of the building, built in 1926 to be a monument to 20thcentury communications technology. "It was more of a personal issue. You really wanted to do something." Collins walked the tower floor by floor with a flashlight on Sept. 12, when the stability of all structures at the site was in question. His firm began reconstruction on 140 West St.

while fires smoldered on the other side of a newly built fire wall. "We had to keep this building alive, The restored because it was our lobby of the only hope for tele- landmark phone service down- building at town," said Collins, 140 West St. whose team worked in lower around the clock ini- Manhattan. tially. "There longer a project was going months.

was being hours and The New Landmarks vancy Collins' al firm and with its awards in "We saw building shortly and it such a state, with collapsed on it, steel beams ing the south was just conservancy izon "went they were and did just a At the same upgrade the Briefing The markets 10-DAY DOW TREND 11000 10750 10500 10250 10000 TE MTWT MT TW BY ALISON GREGOR SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY was no that to take Everything done by days." York Conserrecognized architecturVerizon highest 2004. that after was in terrifying buildings top of piercside. It president ahead going to fabulous time, PHOTO BY MICHAEL TAMBORRINO TAMBORRINO ogy in the building. "We had an opportunity to building back from a 1926 vintage mark to a state-of-the-art modern technology and infrastructure hind the aesthetic features of it," A DOW A NASDAQ 11,043.44 2,331.36 Up 31.86 Up 11.04 A 500 BOND YIELDS 1,294.18 10-year Treasury Up 4.49 4.45%, up from 4.42% SPOT GOLD A OIL $548.80 $63.94 Up $4.50 Up $0.57 Stock watch Gemstar-TV Guide GMST: $3.12 Up $0.39 (14.3%) Sales of the redesigned version of the TV magazine are up 38 percent, averaging 400,000 copies in the first 11 issues. Apple Computer AAPL: $83.90 (3.7%) $3.04 It's music to their ears: Three big brokerages raised their forecasts for Apple after first-quarter revenue came in at a mammoth $5.7 billion.

Overheard "We saw that building shortly after and it was in such a terrifying state, with buildings collapsed on top of it, steel beams piercing the south side. It was just incredible." Peg Breen, president of The New York Landmarks Conservancy, on Verizon's West Street building before it was restored by a Setauket architectural firm Data point $35M Amount previously of unpaid sales tax collected by New York City and state from worried (or guilty-feeling) art collectors since June 2002 after L. Dennis Kozlowski, disgraced chief executive of Tyco, was nabbed for not paying up on his art transactions. Coming up The Treasury reports today on the federal budget for December. Compiled from wire reports PHOTO AMIAGA Peg Breen said.

Verwithout knowing what get from their insurance restoration job." Verizon was able to telecom pm Ucl technol- minic Veltri, director of Verizon's real esbring the tate operations group. land- As a result, with the skyscraper besaid Do- See the company designated as its world headquarters RESTORATION on A54.