Reminds me of Flick’s work of Flickinger studios, has a distinct appreciation of beauty.

Which schools in DC have the best sculpting class I wonder? Is there a place here where one can play around with custom mold concrete statuary?

nice!

I don’t know why, but this doorway and face remind me of some graffiti that was on an out building of my University that I passed everyday. “Scarlett’s Gone” It’ probably just a band or something, but I always imagined that Scarlett broke some guy’s heart and he wrote that. Or maybe she was a bitch and he was jubilant.

Looks like a prison cell with those bars at the top. That space was probably used as some sort of holding cell at one point.

RE: my ‘idea’

I presume something like this goes on, but a big deterrent is that a lot of the “stuff” is designed for large buildings (i.e. elaborate exterior stone cornicing on 20 story buildings) that is seemingly way out of scale for homes (i.e. individual buyers who would by “stuff” as pieces, and not a developer looking to buy the entire lot and reuse it. Also, unattractive to developers/designers b/c it can tie their hands creatively.) Also, most of that stuff is so damn heavy that you need serious equipment to move it. There’s also the danger of exacerbating structural degradation in the process, and damaging sidewalks and hurting pedestrians should anything fall.

Never the less, I could see clever people turning cornicing into outdoor benches, and similar unconventional repurposing.

My aunt’s father was a master carpenter who primarily did lavish interior finishing work (cornicing, staircases, etc.) When St. Louis was demolishing a lot of its vacant pre-Depression-era housing in the 70s(?), he would go to the demolition sites, and pay the guys a few bucks to turn a blind eye during their lunch breaks, while he removed the incredible banisters and such. The houses had to come down for structural and economic reasons (like Detroit today), but there wasn’t an appreciation for the value still inside of them. I assume that today scrappers can’t earn a quick buck on banisters the way they can copper wiring, so the craftsmanship in those homes is ignored and eventually destroyed and lost under the weight of the valueless structure that houses it. In this way, junkie scrappers and city govt are the same way — neither have the luxury of time (or vision) needed for the turn around on profit.

I do feel sorry for those cities though. Architecture goes a long way in attracting reinvestment (look at our city.) Pilfering it, and likely creating an economy that will just increase illegal vandal scrapping, might be like removing the blood arteries from a sick patient. That said, Detroit is demolishing its historic structures just to made its city center look like less of a war zone when people commute in to visit its stadium (the major traffic draw.)

The Detroit building I mentioned earlier was the Lafeyette Building. Their GRAND CENTRAL STATION (designed by the same Architect who did NYC’s) is going to be demolished as well w/ Stimulus money. You gotta see this building to believe it (it was featured in Godfried Reggio’s film Naqoyqatsi)
http://www.infrastructurist.com/2009/04/13/knucklehead-politicians-want-to-tear-down-beautiful-train-station/
“The main waiting room on the main floor was modeled after an ancient Roman bathhouse with walls of marble. The building also housed a large hall adorned with Doric columns and contained the ticket office and arcade shops. Beyond the arcade was the concourse, which had brick walls and a large copper skylight.”
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/10/demolition_begins_on_lafayette.html
“…Each floor had two marble drinking fountains and a direct phone line to the fire department. Seven elevators, arranged in circular tiers, opened into a spacious lobby. They ran at 800 feet per minute. Its marble, Italian Renaissance interior was accented with bronze light fixtures and black-walnut walls … Embellished porticos led patrons in, where the ground floor was laid out as an arcade.”

Anyway, this might make for a good thread topic — What is happening to all that good historic stuff in those cities? How can it be reused, conventionally or unconventionally? What companies are out there already doing this? How would you use it on your home/in your neighborhood.

The Matchbox guys scored a lot of stuff for the interior of the upcoming Ted’s Bulletin from the old Philadelphia Convention Center via Second Chance (http://www.secondchanceinc.org/) in Baltimore. I wrote about it here: http://www.thehillishome.com/2009/10/bulletin/

I’ve been to one of the Second Chance warehouses a few times, and it’s absolutely amazing. It’s like Brass Knob and Community Forklift combined and on steroids.