For nearly a year, worshipers and visitors at St. Patrick’s Cathedral have beheld a mighty power above — a moving scaffold of artists and restorers.
Modern-day Michelangelos and their assistants are cleaning and painting the plaster at different levels of the iconic building.
They’ve also been cleaning and restoring the stained-glass windows, pane by pane.
Anyone who walks in the Fifth Avenue entrance can’t help but notice the work, but it hasn’t closed the neo-Gothic building that first opened in 1878.
St. Patrick’s has seven Masses scheduled each weekday, from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and the restorers have managed to work around — or rather, on top — of the worshipers.
The restorers work from the ground level to the top deck of the scaffold, which is 125 feet up.
Restoration work began in May 2012 and is expected to be completed by December 2015.
The cathedral’s biggest restoration since the 1940s has a projected cost of $175 million.
Various restoration stages are being undertaken simultaneously, officials said.
About 50 percent of the stained glass in the windows has been cleaned, including most of the huge Rose Window that adorns the Fifth Avenue facade.
About 40 percent of the stonework on the cathedral’s interior and about 60 percent on the Tuckahoe marble exterior has been cleaned and restored.
