The Broken Kilometer

393 West Broadway | also 81 Wooster Street, 77 Wooster Street, 391 West Broadway | SoHo | built 1890

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1979
Walter De Maria lays out 500 brass rods as The Broken Kilometer
On view at 393 West Broadway since 1979, Walter De Maria's The Broken Kilometer is made of 500 polished solid brass rods, each two meters long and two inches thick, set in five rows of 100 across a space 45 by 125 feet. Laid end to end the rods would stretch 3,280 feet, or one kilometer, and together they weigh 18 3/4 tons. Dia commissioned the work and maintains it.
Source: diaart.org
2023
January 11
The Broken Kilometer and Earth Room reopen year-round after conservation
For more than four decades both De Maria installations had opened only from September to June. After a six-month conservation project that upgraded heating and cooling, improved infrastructure and added a reading room beside The Earth Room, Dia reopened them on January 11, 2023, with year-round hours from Wednesday to Sunday.
Source: diaart.org

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