Gargoyles are the help mates of garboyes.
With regard to accepting that their new building would have to retain the gargoyles because of city-decreed landmark status, this illustrates an important point about Watchtower leaders: they will compromise their own "Christian" principles whenever it is to the advantage of their publishing empire. God forbid that any individual JW do the same thing, though.
This attitude can be seen in any number of instances of JW history.
Until Nathan Knorr decided to be married, it was not only forbidden for Bethelites to be married, but the JW community often socially censured young people outside Bethel who got married. My parents were married in 1946 and it took 3-4 years for my Dad -- who left Bethel to get married -- to regain "privileges of service". My wife's parents got married around 1950 and were socially ostracised for years. Hayden Covington, who became president of the Watchtower Society for a short time after Rutherford died, and was the Society's bigtime lawyer who won a lot of cases for them before the U.S. Supreme Court, was married but was required not to live in Bethel. Instead, he and his wife lived in an apartment that was actually part of one of the Society's factory buildings but had an outside entrance. Covington was considered part of the Bethel family but his wife was not, and she had an outside, paying job. Obviously Knorr considered him useful and so the rules were bent to the Society's advantage.
Until 1952 vaccinations were considered to be just as bad as blood transfusions are today. However, various WTS officials had a great deal of trouble meeting vaccination requirements for overseas travel, which restricted their freedom to travel, and so the Society simply dumped its long-standing doctrinal position.
For decades the Society railed against young people going to college. "Pioneer or go to Bethel" was the watch-phrase. College was downgraded as an evil place where all sorts of evil things were virtually guaranteed to occur. Worst, of course, was that a young person might actually learn some facts that might show that some of the Society's teachings were bogus. But by the early 1990s the Society was having a lot of trouble finding new Bethel recruits who were trained in the technical areas that they needed for continued expansion. The young "Bethel boys" were completely unskilled and had to be trained to do everything, which was a problem for the Society since the average time of stay by that time was only about three years. So in 1992, in the November 1 Watchtower article "Education With a Purpose", WTS leaders lightened up on their traditional stand and told the JW community:
When parents and young Christians today, after carefully and prayerfully weighing the pros and cons, decide for or against postsecondary studies, others in the congregation should not criticize them. If Christian parents responsibly decide to provide their children with further education after high school, that is their prerogative.
This simple bit of lightening up, WTS leaders knew, would result in many young JWs going to college or otherwise getting a technical education, and eventually the Society would find some of them entering Bethel where their skills would be put to use.
As a longtime elder once explained to me, Watchtower leaders are very practical men who really have little spirituality or devotion to Christian principles. They make a show of such devotion, and when certain leaders are personally bothered about some form of misconduct that the Bible also condemns, they will enforce "Bible principles" with a vengeance. But when devotion to such principles creates a problem for the Society, such as tarnishing its image, they give up on principle and do the "practical" thing.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in how the Society has handled sexual misconduct over the years. In Rutherford's day, the Society was not terribly concerned with marriage and fornication and adultery. Indeed, Rutherford himself was estranged from his wife and son for decades, and he maintained at least one mistress. Other top WTS leaders apparently engaged in conduct that, under Knorr, would have gotten them booted out. But Knorr was personally concerned about sexual matters, to the point of considering sex dirty even in marriage. So under him, the Society became obsessed with "sexual cleanness" in JW congregations. Fornication and adultery became disfellowshipping offenses. By the early 1970s these men even inserted themselves into the private bedroom practices of married couples. Today, by far the largest body of Pharisaical WTS rules concerns sexual misconduct.
On the other hand, Watchtower leaders until very recently have been essentially unconcerned about the sexual abuse of children. That's partly because so many otherwise prominent and useful Watchtower leaders or elders have been involved in sexual abuse themselves. So to protect themselves, or their old-boy-network buddies, and most especially the Society's image, the Society has tried to cover up child sexual abuse in congregations however it could. Even today, rather than do what is necessary to rid their organization of molesters and get to the bottom of abuse situations, they invoke ecclesiastical privilege in order that elders avoid testifying -- even when terrible injustice is done to the abuse victims. Why? In order to protect that holy "Watchtower Society" name and the ones responsible for its disgusting policies.
We all know very well what words are used to describe men who say but do not perform, who say one thing and do another, who give the appearance of righteousness but inside are "full of dead men's bones and every sort of uncleanness".
AlanF