How much gold does it take to cover the Golden Dome? A thousand pounds? A hundred? Fifty? Ten?
Try less than eight ounces.
That's the approximation from someone who knows -- Bernard Groenke, Jr., president of Conrad Schmitt Studios of New Berlin, Wisconsin. The company handled the most recent regilding of the dome, in 1988, which cost $286,000, including scaffolding and the specialized labor required to apply the gold.
Like other golden domes, the famous one on Notre Dame's Main Building is covered with narrow strips of 23 3/4 carat gold leaf, which is only 3 microns thick. That's so thin, Groenke says, "that when you hold it up to the sun you can see through it."
How can so little gold cover the Golden Dome? Easy. Gold is so malleable that, according to Groenke, a ball the size of a pea could be hammered out into enough gold leaf to cover an acre.
The sandblasting effect of weathering necessitates regilding of the Golden Dome every 20 years. But the base of the Virgin Mary statue required touching up just last year. The culprit? Pigeons. Claw marks had appeared, and the gold leaf had been eaten away in places by acidic pigeon droppings.
Groenke says pigeons were not always a problem, because red-tailed hawks patrolled the perch. Unfortunately, no hawks have been seen around the dome for two or three years. Now facilities planners are unsure how to keep it from going to the birds.
