A demolition crew was close to being finished Friday morning knocking down the former home of Waldbart Florist, in Richmond Heights.
A worker there said someone had salvaged some of the terracotta on the building, but much couldn’t be saved, considering the construction timeline.
This is why there is no history in this country. The building was being used and was useful. We throw perfectly good things into landfills for no reason. Wasting resources is all we do. Leave things alone that are fine. we don’t need all of the time
it is ridiculous to tear down a perfectly good building, wasting resources instead of preserving resources and a bit of history.
wastefulness is not appreciated
It wasn’t perfectly good. It was filled with asbestos.
So are many homes in Maplewood and Richmond Heights. Asbestos is a non hazardous material when undisturbed. It was a popular and effective building material for a century in roofing, siding, duct and pipe wrapping. It becomes hazardous when disturbed, like during demolition. Long term high exposure is when it is most dangerous. That is why all the legal commercials about mesothelioma mention working in Naval Yards or manufacturing.
Looks like they made no attempt to contain the asbestos. With the strong winds last week it is likely spread all over MPW and Clayton….
Good riddance
Most of the demo companies are pretty smart about what can and cannot be salvaged but I am wondering if anyone knows if anything was saved from the buildings. Several items were mentioned in another post such as the stained glass and radiators an old sinks. Any ideas if that happened.
Being in the construction trades I know that there is often a big push to get the building down and a big machine is the way it is done. On the other hand that does not save most things and it is often just tossed in a landfill. It is a shame that there is not a compromise put in the plans to save some of these items. St Louis brick is often trucked miles away for new building projects but how you do that and make money is I guess the issue.
Wonder if the city could impose some sort of restrictions on major teardowns like this one that to get a permit some sort of reuse/recycling plan for materials needs to be implemented for the permit to be issued.
Yes. Some material was re-purposed. Refab St Louis came in and took a limited number of the items. Good Organization. You can see the photos they posted on FB: https://www.facebook.com/refabstl/posts/2050903358270267
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Interesting thought in regards to restricting demos in some way. I like the idea but not sure how it would be able to be enforced. It would be hard to list all the items that are required to be saved especially given the variable condition. This is partly why there are historical registries, which I don’t think Richmond Heights has. Maybe there could be a mandatory amount of time that must pass on buildings built before X date which requires X amount of time between demo approval and demo start. While it wouldn’t force a company to seek out companies like Refab, it would potentially encourage it.