In an effort to divert a lot of recyclable construction material from the landfill, the City of Austin is offering for purchase the reusable building materials from the buildings and sites facing demolition due to the city’s convention center expansion, north of the center itself and west of Red River into two city blocks. Deconstruction began in February, and to unload the remaining items, the city will have ongoing Saturday Salvage Sales through May. Everything from kitchen cabinets, dishwashers, and fireplaces, to metal staircases, balconies, and windows, right down to the very joists supporting the floor, and the bricks which make up the walls, are being taken out of those buildings slated for demolition and have been made available for public sale.
On an early jaunt one sunny Saturday morning, my husband and I were greeted by a very willing and helpful staff who allowed us to browse freely and peruse the property for a good couple of hours. At first view, the former Railyard Apartments looked like Melrose Place gone awry: The blue-tiled pool and the curving metal staircases and steel balconies, though void of people, show signs of the privileged downtown life that existed but a few months ago. Slowly but surely, the apartments are being ransacked of every last doorknob and light fixture, but instead of falling prey to random vandalism and wanton destruction, this deconstruction is at the hands of thrifty, adventurous people who know the value and the thrill of finding just the right gadget and maybe even discovering some essential thing they never knew they needed. Because of the salvaging, these fixtures have another chance at functional existence.
In the old Louis Shanks warehouse, sunlight streamed through rafters where once a roof existed. All of this building — from the freight elevator to those very rafters and even the beams supporting them — had already been sold. While I wished we had gotten there a earlier to lay claim on this piece of Austin’s history, I was glad that these chunks of building were going somewhere other than the already overcrowded city landfill.
Walking into the old Austin File Building was like finding a renovator’s Disneyland. In a perfect world, it would be left standing, but in this world I felt lucky that at least it was being pieced out for anyone who might want or need a window weight or a gutter. Inside there were metal doors, giant casement windows, wooden and glass panel doors, and there, in the corner … what’s that? An old cast iron prep sink? Who knew we needed such a thing? Of course, as soon as we saw it, we had to have it. We found Pops, the salesman, and asked him what he thought it was worth. He turned the question back on us.
“What do you think it’s worth?”
Oh man, I hate when they do that.
It’s worth the sun and all the stars if I could just possess it. It’s worth my weight in gold if I could take it home. It’s worth, oh, I don’t know, “How ’bout five bucks?”
“Sold.”
Wow, that was easy. But part of the deal was that we had to remove it from the place it has held for the last 60 some odd years. Sledgehammer and crowbar in place, we used, as we’d been told we could, any means necessary. So, by hook and by crook, we got it out, leaving a giant hole where a sink used to be.
As we carted our new old sink over to our truck, we passed little huddled groups of gloved and crowbar-armed people. Some were loading bricks into their truck beds from the pile that was once the Bluebonnet Market Place. Some were looking way up, eyeing giant, weighted windows and trying to figure out how in the world they could get up there and claim them from their masonry holes. Still others were just browsing and happy for the chance to walk through an abandoned building without risk of police intervention.
Officially, the sale is open to the public on Saturdays, 8am-4pm, but drop-ins during the week (hard hat recommended) can sometimes be accommodated. The project area is the two square blocks between Third and Fourth Streets, from Trinity to Red River. For more info, including photos of the buildings being demolished and a list of available materials, check out their Web site at: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/aeservices/salvage.htm –B.N.
This article appears in April 23 • 1999 and April 23 • 1999 (Cover).