Builders renovating City Hall in Jersey City uncovered and restored the original tile floors from 100 years ago

• Jersey City is using the lockdown as a time to do work on construction projects that would typically disrupt citizens' day-to-day lives.
• One of the projects they took on was removing vinyl floors from City Hall, and the construction team was surprised to find the original floors from 100 years ago hiding beneath the surface.
• Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop shared photos of the renovation in a tweet that had over 145,000 likes at the time of writing.
• "It's nice to be able to bring something back, and it's some nice positive news during the pandemic," Fulop told Insider.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Much of the United States is still shut down, leaving normally busy places like schools and malls empty.

The Jersey City government decided to use the slow foot traffic to work on projects that would typically disrupt residents' day-to-day lives, such as paving roads, according to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop.

"We tried to re-prioritize a lot of the projects we were going to do later in the year and next year," Fulop told Insider. "The ones that would've been inconvenient for residents we tried to move up in the time table to do now."

The renovations included replacing the vinyl floors in City Hall

The structure was built in the late 1800s, but the vinyl floors were added to City Hall in the 1960s.

"There was a period in the 1960s and '70s when people didn't value historical buildings," Fulop said.

"Tearing up the floors of City Hall would've been something that would've taken a lot more time because we would've had to close off sections as opposed to pretty much the entire building," Fulop said of the project.

The renovation involved removing asbestos, and small construction groups came in over the past three to four weeks to get to work on the project, maintaining social distancing while they worked and wearing gloves and masks.

"If the building was operating on normal times, there'd be a lot more people in there," Fulop told Insider.

Fulop said they weren't anticipating there would be much of anything underneath the vinyl.

"We didn't expect anything to be underneath it, really," Fulop said. "We expected whatever was going to be underneath there would be unusable."

But as they pulled up the vinyl, the construction team was surprised to discover the building's original floors were mostly intact

The tile hiding beneath the vinyl clearly has a pretty pattern, but years of grime obstructed its true beauty.

"We saw what the original tiles were, which were common in parts of Europe in the late 19th century," Fulop told Insider.

"A lot of workmanship went into those, obviously, and we saw that they were still, for the most part, usable," the mayor added.

Fulop and the crew quickly decided they wanted to restore the original flooring, returning the building to its previous glory.

They got to work on cleaning the floor so they could see what it would look like when it was fully restored.

The tile held up remarkably well, though there are some areas that need replacing.

"There are still some spots that we're going to need to replicate, but the good thing is we have a roadmap and we're going to be able to restore the building to what it was back then with some degree of certainty," Fulop said.

Fulop posted before-and-after photos of the renovation to his Twitter, and it quickly went viral

The tweet had over 145,000 likes at the time of writing.

"We thought we'd find garbage, but instead we found the original from 100 years ago," Fulop said in the tweet.

Many people responded to the tweet asking why anyone would have covered up such beautiful flooring.

Fulop said Twitter has been a helpful resource amid the project, as experts in tile have been responding to his tweet with information on where it comes from and how to care for it.

"We had a lot of people reach out who have the expertise, and that's been helpful," Fulop said of the response to his tweet.

People also started responding to the tweet with photos of their own surprise floor reveals.

This patterned floor in Ireland was hiding under a layer of linoleum.

And one user shed some light on a renovation that took place at a different city hall.

A renovation of the Minnesota state capitol revealed beautiful tile flooring hiding under a layer of carpet.

Fulop told Insider it's been meaningful to restore a piece of Jersey City's history with this project

"The city has a lot of history," Fulop said of Jersey City. "It's been a very diverse community; it's an immigrant story. It's one of the first communities in the state and country."

"It's nice to be able to bring something back, and it's some nice positive news during the pandemic," Fulop added.

Jersey City also plans to restore two floors of City Hall that have been unusable since a fire damaged them in the late 1970s.

"The building has great bone structure but it needed to be refreshed, and we're doing it with a nod to the past," Fulop said.

Fulop also noted that he hopes other cities take advantage of the shutdown as a time to better their communities.

"We're trying to maximize the time," Fulop said. "Hopefully more cities are doing that. Yes, we're technically on shutdown, but there are still a lot of things you can do that will be helpful for residents."

"I think that's really important for governments to be doing right now," he added.

You can see Fulop's original tweet here, and you can learn more about Jersey City's most recent projects here.

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