Step off of West 44th Street and into the lobby and look to your left. The artists — and we must call them that — who crafted that magnificent marble staircase were masters. You can tell.
They knew they were working on something that would last much longer than their own lives, and it has lasted 114 years so far. They knew that generations would walk these marble steps every day, again and again, and most would never know the names of the builders. But that didn’t matter to the builders; only the work mattered.