It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Metropolitan’s Headquarters with the traditional 20-foot tall tree filling the rotunda.
Assembling and decorating the tree takes a crew of six people about 12 hours.
The tree boasts 500 yards of ribbon and 14 huge bins of ornaments. This year, instead of the traditional colors of mostly red and green, staff did something different. “We wanted to try something with a more contemporary look using mainly silver, gold, white and black” said
Mike Patel
who managed the project this year.
Mike
explains that staff brought the idea for the new color scheme to the owner of the company that decorates the tree. The owner was excited by the proposal but did not have enough decorations in those colors to do the tree justice. “The minute our meeting ended,”
Mike
said, “he headed straight for the warehouse so he could get enough ornaments and ribbons in those colors.”
“It was a challenge making a black, white and silver tree on such a large scale,” commented the decorator. “It is rare that we get to create a tree from scratch that is so big. Everyone on the crew loved the creative experience.”
Metropolitan owns the tree and when it is not on display, it is stored in the HQ building. It has five sections and measures 11-feet in diameter at its base. Displays celebrating other cultures and holidays will adorn the rotunda starting in early December.