Cityscape: Christopher Bonanos

Why Is the Floor of the Oculus Crumbling? Seven years in, the marble slabs are chipping and flaking. It didn't have to be this way.

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LOOK UP WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH the World Trade Center Oculus, and you can forgive almost everything: the $4 billion bill as the rest of the transit system starved, the skylight that was supposed to open but doesn't because the rubber seal ripped, the underperforming mall with its dumpy little kiosks selling dumpy little souvenirs. Enter that hall, and it does what Santiago Calatrava said it would. Your eye is drawn up the marble walls and the white ribs, and you are reminded of the nave of a great cathedral. You can experience, as a commuter, a moment's uplift.

Cast your eye downward, though, and you're back in busted-up New York.

The white slabs making up the floor of the concourse are chipped and flaked at the edges. Corners are broken, and thousands of scuffing soles have ground dirt into the rough spots, blackening them. Some slabs have been replaced, and they're whiter and shinier than the rest. The building opened only seven years ago, in March 2016, and the rest of it still looks crisp and new. The floor does not.

Grand Central Terminal just turned 110, and its Tennessee-marble floor is arguably in better shape.

I asked the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey about the replacement work, some of which I saw going on last year. Its representatives offered a statement: "Normal wear and tear of the Oculus floor is being addressed by systematically repairing and/or replacing damaged tiles," adding that work had stopped for the holidays and "will resume later this year." Calatrava's office declined to comment. Neither would talk in any detail about the beat-up floor.