I’ll Be Sorry When the UWS Construction Crew Next Door Bids Adios

By Allan Ripp

“Oh no,” I called out to my wife upon spotting a work crew atop the building next door.

Our Upper West Side apartment has good orientation toward Central Park, offering a pleasant rooftop sightline and plenty of sunlight eight floors up. There’s even birdsong from several rooms, whereas the front of the house features a steady din and soot from crosstown traffic flows at 96th Street.

First came the buckets and tarps, along with plywood floor planks, ladders, rope lines, harnesses, mesh netting and giant metal braces. I worried our neighbors were planning an elevated roof deck that would obstruct our view and generate endless construction racket.

Turns out they were undertaking pointing and other exterior repairs to comply with New York’s famous facade inspection program known as Local Law 11. OK, we’d still see the park and backyard trees, though we’d have to put up with pounding a mere 20 feet away.

But in the weeks that followed there was no pounding – only three short laborers in hoodies, vests and tool holsters, earnestly going about their business aligning bricks, spray-washing walls, fixing cracks and fortifying parapet edges. They constantly cleaned as they went and evened-up their work with an old-fashioned level and tape measure.

I could hear them conversing in Spanish, laughing and teasing one another with surprise hugs and shoulder taps. They were skilled craftsmen, leaning in to apply fresh mortar or examine a joint, taking extra care to secure the roof’s perimeter. They ate lunch at the same time, propped against a chimney, absorbed in their phones. Neither the summer heat wave nor drenching squalls kept them away. Occasionally they looked my way and gave a thumbs up.

I welcomed their morning arrival, glancing up from my dining room laptop to watch their progress and camaraderie. The contrast was striking – me on a Zoom call or tapping an email while the three fellows were spreading protective sealant, fine-coating a surface, hauling heavy bags, sweeping debris or scaling a riser. The orange buckets made excellent foot stools. Sometimes they climbed over the wall and disappeared.

And the music! From either one of their phones or a speaker poured lusty, impassioned rancheras, boleros, corridos, polkas and oompah folk tunes. Backed by trumpets, tubas, guitars and accordions, a deep-throated troubadour sang with romantic gusto as if he was serenading a senorita on a balcony in moonlight rather than a gringo at his marble table writing a memo. The workers swayed their hips. I turned off the air conditioning and kept the window wide open to keep the songs coming in.

“Is that a mariachi band?” a client asked during a conference call. I muted my mic, listening to the balladeers rather than my droning colleagues.

One afternoon I saw one of the workers stowing his gear in front of the building. He confirmed he and his crew were from Mexico, where they learned their trade. They only met when they were hired by the same New York masonry contractor and became a roving team. I wanted to ask his name and learn more but he seemed hesitant – was I really a friendly neighbor or an ICE whistleblower?

As summer wound down, I observed things heading toward completion – the red bricks were practically shining, the mortar bright as vanilla icing, and the guys admiring their repairs with pride. Some extras arrived to inspect. I knew they’d soon be headed to the next site.

Whatever their immigration status didn’t matter to me. I know what I saw – three hard-working amigos showing up each day with a sense of purpose and an inspired playlist, leaving their job in tip-top shape. We can always use more friends like those.

Mr. Ripp runs a press relations firm in New York.

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