Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-07-28
Secondhand Building Stun.

stuff" was asked of = nan who was
placing on q truck the remnants of q
building that had been torn down in
Sixth avenue.
"Take it to the yard" he replied.
"And then what?"
"Sell it."
The yard referred to Is the head
quarters of a dealer in secondhand
building material.
This business is fifty years DID," the
nearly forty city lots. They are Gov
cred With secondhand building
material. We car supply brick for
the interior walls, or brown stone for
front walls, or granite columns for or
namental high stoops or porticoes. It
is all ready for use, and it is of known
quality. We have thousands of feet of
timber and lumber of various kinds.
Every kind of lumber used in building
a house can be found here, joists, floor
ing, studding, rafters and roof boards.
The roof itself can be had, too. Tin
d~eteriorates some, but states do not so
much. We al supply tin roof that is
as good as it was the day it was laid.
We have several cords of states. Our
lumber is better than new. It is thor
oughly seasoned. We supply the lumber
for about all the swell mansions.
Every piece of timber in Vanderbilt's
house came from this yard. When
men put thousands of dollars into
frescoes they want no shrinkage in the
timbers of their houses"
'You do not confine your attention
to dwellings, do your"
"Your question reminds me of a man
from a neighboring village who came
here. He said he guessed he'd got an
order that would puzzle us to fill. He
wanted a secondhand pulpit. He was
astonished when I showed him a COM
plete outfit. We had stained glass win
dows, crosses, affairs, candlesticks, rails,
mourning benches, a sprinkling bowl,
and a baptistery. I showed him a full
assortment of pews for the body of the
church. Then I offered him a second
hand steeple with bell, complete and
all set up. He bought a pulpit and paid
for it in silence. He was SO astonished
he couldn't talk"
'''What else car you fit outp"
Anything. Here's a good bar for a
lager beer room, and back of it is an
elegant arrangement of shelves to hold
the cut-glass bottles. There are mir
rors between to reflect the back hair of
the bartender. If you want one we can
supply you with a frst-class stall fit
for Maud S. There would be an iron
manager in one corner, a solid mahogany
door at the other, and a rosewood hay
rack between, if you wanted it,"
"You don't mean to say you've
bought in secondhand stalls Of that
kind, do your"
"Well, not quite that. We have
everything but the hay rack, though,
and have got the stuff for that. To
return to the interior work of dwellings,
we have everything necessary to fit out
either q mansion in Fifth avenue or a
shanty for a squatter sovereign. We
just sold a pair Of Italian marble man.
tells that probably cost $500 each when
new. They are as good now as then.
You can almost see through them they
are so clear, and the carving is exquisite.
We have mantels in various kinds of
colored marble, and two in Mexican
oynx that are beautiful. We get hold
of hand-carved mantels and newell posts,
stair rails, doors, and frames that would
delight the heart of one able to appre-
ciate the beauty of such work. There
is a gas chandelier. The figures are
extremely delicate. 1t is carved from
solid walnut. In common articles it
would tire you merely to hear them
enumerated. You can not think of any
article, door knobs, girders, gas pipes,
ranges, book cases, mirrors, anything
that is known under the head of mod.
ern Improvements OF as q part Of the
house itself that we cannot supply.
Wen buy any kind of a building.
Booths Theatre is now making its way
here piecemeal. The old bank building
that stood at 40 and AZ Wall street is
here. A part of the partition that once
ornamented a Morrisania bank will go
into Harry Miners new theatre. II
will make the handsomest box Office
you eve saw He gets Booths fancy
iron orchestra railing also. We have a
windlass here that was used in a down
town bank to hoist the gold up out OF
the vaults in the basement. In our
office is a stool that was used in a sue
cessiono of business houses for more than
a hundred years. The clock, a round
w HAoAAs U"O 4CCU III OldL4CUC1, Is dS
old. 1t is more se%rviceable. An enor-
NOUS eagle looks down on the book
keeper from between masks out of an
old theatre. He sits at a desk that was
made in the time of Queen Elizabeth. "
Glow do you get it alp"
eve have three buyers out all the
time. Usually, the contractor who
puts up a new house gets the old one in
tho bargain. We buy and remove it
for him if he wishes, or we buy any part
Of it. We sell mostly to builders and
large real estate owners. Everything
is sold on it's merits" =
"And price?:"
"About one-third that Of new on the
average. Some of the fine pieces which
we sell to builders are turned in to the
owners at ten times our prices. You
can not say that it is a cheat either, be-
cause as such bric-a-brac goes the price
is reasonable"
SHOW much of a business is it?"
"Ours is not the only yard. We sold
$4,000 worth of firewood from the
waste last year, and the total sales
amounted to a little more than $780,
600. We used to give away the kindling