In the News!

The walls come tumbling down -- carefully

Thursday, April 6, 2006

BY GREG KOWALSKI

Workers from the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit carefully disassemble a house on Windemere Street in Birmingham.

"Deconstructed" is the term used by Carolyn Mosher, president of the Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit. Formed in 2003, the ASWD is a nonprofit organization that takes houses apart, piece by piece, to salvage whatever is usable to be reconstructed into another house begin built.

"A lot of people are tearing down perfectly good houses," Mosher said. Rather than seeing the material end up in a landfill, ASWD resells it.

"If the windows are in good shape, we save them," Mosher said. Tile can be hard to recover, but hardwood flooring is a popular product.

The material goes to the ASWD building, which is on 15th Street in Detroit. On display there is a host of items ranging from medicine cabinets to radiators, as well as stone architectural details that some designers drool over.

To get the material the ASWD sends in a crew to dismantle a house, or portions of it. Along with saving the material, the ASWD provides jobs and job training for workers.

"We're all about creating jobs," Mosher said. "We don't have any volunteers."

Building owners can get a tax credit for the value of the material on a scale determined by the IRS. ASWD can do a full teardown "right to the basement," Mosher said. But that can cost the homeowner because of the cost of the deconstruction crew, which might spend several weeks on a job.

Most homeowners might find it more practical to let the ASWD crews remove selective items, like fine molding or windows.

But practicality isn't everything.

"I really feel it's a worthwhile thing," said Kent Lassen, a Birmingham custom home builder. He contacted ASWD to take down a house in Bloomfield Township and was pleased with the work. "They were very professional," he said.

Lassen said it bothered him that fine fixtures in the house could have ended up in the trash. "I cringe when this stuff comes down," he said. Thanks to ASWD it will find a new home -- literally. He plans to use ASWD for future projects.

Originally from New York, Mosher has a master of fine arts degree. She founded ASWD after seeing the huge number of old homes in the metro Detroit are that were being demolished. These often were made of fine material or had ornamental and quality fixtures that were commonly used in the past.

"Detroit's history is going into the landfill," she said. ASWD redirects it.

The ASWD can be reached through its Web site www.ASWDetroit.org, or by calling Mosher at (313) 515-0399.

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