Winter Storm in New York: A Super's Tale of Fixing a Mangled Chandelier

According to the alerts on my phone, it was shaping up to be my favorite kind of winter day. Possible subzero temperatures set off a Code Blue ping. Next came a snow advisory. Then a wind advisory. If the warnings panned out, in a few hours the superintendent at my Lower Manhattan co-op would make his way from New Jersey to fire up the cherry-red minitractor and clear our sidewalk. Ordinarily in this situation, before his arrival and before snowplows and salters disturbed the ironic calm and quiet of a blizzard, I would bundle up and head out to put the first footprints in the snow and walk through the blurry silence. 

But this time, I was on vacation, getting up only to adjust the angle of my beach umbrella. As much as I love a blizzard in New York City, reading a good mystery on a sunny Caribbean island isn’t a bad way to spend a winter day.

Except my phone kept pinging. And not with weather alerts. It was the co-op email chain. A neighbor six floors above had a leak in his apartment. Unless shareholders on the five floors in between us started chiming in with the same problem, I was not going to panic.

Another ping. A downstairs neighbor reported losing another night’s sleep because of excessive clanging in his radiator. Probably more pipes would have to be adjusted and more traps cleared. So far, every time the issue had appeared to be solved, it popped up again like a Whac-A-Mole.

Ping. Ping. Darn. A notice that the elevator was out. At least no one was stuck inside.

Ping. Ping. Ping. Monthly maintenance statements had gone out. Shareholders who’d tuned out the board’s announcement of a rate increase at the last annual meeting were questioning their bills.

Ping. A shareholder’s window balance had failed. Why would she want to open her window in this weather?

Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. The prospect of rolling my suitcase past a broken elevator and hauling it up the fire staircase when I returned home was not pleasant. Nor was having middle-of-the-night clanging make its way up from the apartment below or a leak coming down from the apartment above.

But by sunset, the only sound on the beach was the lapping of waves. The email stream of complaints had stopped, probably because our super had set things right. That’s why I returned home a few days later confident that all would be fixed. And it was. The elevator came when I called it. My front hall was dry. The radiator was silent. Snow was even forecast for the following day.

Relieved, I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. But something seemed … off. It wasn’t the fridge, which was working fine. The sink hadn’t backed up. Cockroaches hadn’t invaded. I turned toward the bedroom to unpack when I caught it out of the corner of my eye. The hundred-pound dining room chandelier was in a mangled heap atop the dining table.

In the past week, while I’d been avoiding the problems in my building, a whopper had occurred inside my apartment.

The fixture was one of a pair that had been made by an artist more than a decade ago with parts from my family’s old bicycles. Rims, spokes and chains had been artfully reimagined into a lacy, light-filled metal confection that had become the heart and hearth of my apartment.

Now I envied neighbors who had been emailing while I was away. Their problems were the co-op’s to solve. This problem was mine alone. The mess of tangled chains on my mangled wood table wasn’t something I could notify the board about. Or call the managing agent’s emergency number regarding. Did I need an electrician? Or a junk remover? Maybe my super, who is neither, would know. I turned off the circuit breaker and waited until morning.

Chandelier repair is not part of my super’s job description. Any work beyond maintaining the building that is performed for individual shareholders is done at the super’s discretion. As talented and capable a craftsman as he is, as much as he is always willing to help and is driven to find solutions, our super makes it clear that he is not a plumber, an electrician or an engineer. Or a miracle worker.

Nevertheless, the next day, after I cornered him as he came to work, our super was in my apartment examining the ceiling and sifting through the debris. Triumphantly, he held up the cracked remains of what I now know is a screw collar loop, the piece of metal that attaches a fixture to the ceiling. “After holding the light up all these years,” he said, “the hardware just failed.” He was able to straighten the bent chandelier, lift it off the table and rest it between two ladders. “Do you think it still works?” I asked. “I have no idea,” he replied, putting tools back into his tool belt. “You need to call an electrician.”

And while I wait for that call to be returned, I’ll settle for a walk in the snow.