Rebuilding a City

The minute peace the city experiences in the morning is cut short by the roar of a saw and the bangs of sledgehammers breaking brick and glass. 1544 N Willington St. Philadelphia, PA, a 1980s disco and night club stands 2 stories tall. A light blue and white rectangular stucco and cinderblock sided soon to be pile of rubble sits ahead a 6 man crew, myself included. This is the job site of David Schwartz Contacting LLC contract through the city of Philadelphia.

David Schwartz Contacting LLC is a demolition, building, remodeling, and concrete construction company based out of North East Philadelphia. They do all types of construction work around the city and this location is the building that I was told to arrive at for work. When I first walked into the decrepit aging structure, the signs that it hadn't been inhabited by anyone in at least a decade. The entire structure is sagging and wearing out due to the years of bad weather and low up keep. It smells like mildew, a rotten smell that makes me almost feel nauseous. I walk up the steps to the top floor which used to be the bar area. I, along with four of my fellow workers; Jimmy, Smalls, Dave, Derick, and Baldo, discuss what we are supposed to do to start the demolition.

“So the way we do demolition for a structure like this is we have to first gut it top to bottom, once it is empty we then have to start to take the roof off. That’s the hardest part, but once that is finished we just have to take the walls down floor by floor” explains Dave in a thick south Philly accent and a deep gravelly voice. Dave, the owner and boss of the company, a 56 year old South Philly man born and raised. He started his company from the ground up with his own money and his own workers. He started out when he was 25 and built from the ground up, now he has made a name for himself to do very quality work, so good that he has earned the attention of the city of Philadelphia. Gaining contracts from the city for jobs for Temple University and municipal building repair. Not only has he gained the attention of the city, but he has earned the attention of many real estate agents. These agents contract him to remodel, and even build entire houses for resale across the city. “He truly does amazing work, the houses he has built for me and my partners are so well done and so up to standard they don’t even need to be staged to be sold” says Tom Love, a Remax eastern agent who has 4 properties currently under construction with Dave and already has had 3 additional properties already sold just in the last year. “The amount of people we have that are interested in his work and want to be a part of what not only what I am doing with him but what they want to do with him is truly a testament to his quality of work” he adds. For me personally when I am in the same room as him the command he takes of a situation and the room is felt throughout everyone around him.

“Were gonna take out the bar, the stage, the bathrooms and the whole office area first” Dave tells us. We start to unload the trucks of the sledgehammers, shovels, crowbars, and power tools, one of which is an industrial gas power saw. All of this, is brought to the top floor, once everything is in place no time is wasted getting started. Its only 7:30 in the morning at this point. Suddenly, and finally, the peace and tension is broken by the whack of a sledgehammer against the cinderblock of the wall. Slam, slam, slam, the cinderblocks start to crack up as Smalls swings with all his power. Smalls, aka Jeff, is a large man, 30 years old and a very experienced worker he knows what he is doing. As Smalls grunts a line forms by him to see who will be next to take their shot at the wall. “Alright kid, let’s see what ya got” Smalls says enthusiastically as he tosses me the sledgehammer. “OK let’s go!” I answer back enthusiastically, practically jumping at the opportunity. I line myself up with the wall, align my feet, and now I grip the whole weight of the sledge hammer. “20lb hammer, let’s see it big boy,” Smalls taunts me from behind in a playful voice. I ready up and start my swing, I unleash all my power into the swing and with a loud crack and a crumble of cinderblock; contact is made. "Damn, alright looks like you go the stuff, I stand corrected." a surprised Smalls remarks. After the vibrations of the hit resonate though my arms during and after the swing. But it felt good. So I continued to swing as hard as I could until I couldn’t swing anymore, chipping away at the cinderblocks to make a small hole to the other side. Everyone standing took turns swinging the hammer to make the hole bigger. This hole was an old window that had been sealed with a brick wall to keep the weather out. Once the once old windows were opened, you could look out and see three thirty-yard roll off dumpsters right below, edged up to building, in the lot next to the site.

 As the day went on the work got harder and harder. The sounds of a gas demo saw roars through the upstairs of the club. Sparks fly as the smell of gas fills the room. The smell is so nauseating that I have to stick my head outside to be able to catch my breath. It got me lightheaded at times but nothing a facemask couldn’t fix. I stood and watched as Derick swung his sledgehammer forcefully at the wall to break it apart. Derick is a 40 year old veteran construction worker. He is a big strong black man, who makes his presence felt in the room. In a friendly voice he says to me “for a kid you know what you’re doin’ boy.” His slight southern accent rolled smoothly as he spoke to me while I was swinging away at the walls breaking them up. We start to take the walls apart by breaking them up, all of the pieces of wall were thrown out the window into the dumpsters. Throwing these pieces out the window was no easy task. The walls were made up of stucco siding with metal mesh attached into it making even small pieces oddly heavy. After removing most of the walls I was exhausted and needed to take a break along with everyone else.

The roar of the saw dies out and we all gather around the radio and cooler. Jimmy walks over from the saw smoking a cigarette. He looks around the room at everyone and smiles, “so how’s everyone doing on this fine day?” he says happily in a high pitched overly cheerful voice. “Good" we answer in one big sigh. The tune of Lynard Skynard's Sweet Home Alabama plays through the radio as we all bob and move along with the music. Everyone checks their phones and smokes a cigarette as we stand around talking, telling stories about past work and funny times in our lives. “Hey, did I ever tell you all about the time I almost took out someone’s wall when I was using a backhoe?” Jimmy asks us with enthusiasm, “Oh, it was hilarious” he starts off, “I was working on demolishing the rest of this house in South Philly when I started to toy around with the bucket and claw. I was having a good time with myself smashing the bricks to pieces when I wasn’t paying attention to where the arm was and before I knew it I was swinging the arm right towards what I assumed to be the neighbors living room wall” he says almost out of breath from talking so fast. “I don’t think I ever moved so quickly to grab the controls to stop the arm, I didn’t end up hitting the wall but I came pretty damn close to hitting it though” he finished laughing to himself along with a few others in the room, myself included.

The break ended and it was back to work for everyone. The saw starts back up with a loud roar then the sound of the blade slicing though metal and concrete. Sparks fly around us as sledgehammers sam into walls with a loud thud followed by the clacks of the pieces of wall falling to the floor. As I look around, I notice that there is a sort of peacefulness within all of this destruction and commotion. Even with all of what’s going on around me, I am within my own world. Swing the hammer, reset, do it all over again until the wall is destroyed and move on. And this is the case for everyone else working, all are in their own zone doing their work. It’s a symphony of destruction going on around me I think to myself as I wind up for another swing at the wall. The rest of the worker, who are mainly Mexican immigrants, dance around us while they clean the room of debris, singing along to the music playing in their ears from their iPod.

It’s after lunchtime and by now the top floor of this used to be club looks like an empty shell of a room with all the framing exposed and walls removed. The only things still intact and standing in the room are twelve support beams made from old studs holding the roof joists up and from buckling under the enormous weight of the roof above. These joists are sagging and falling apart under the roof and it almost seems unsafe to even be standing under them for a moment. “Don’t worry, the studs will hold the weight. You’re safe to walk under them, at least until we start to take the roof down section by section” Dave explains to me as we stand in the now empty room together. “We take pride in our work here, especially myself. I never leave a job without it being done to the best of my own and my employee’s abilities. I never leave unfinished business anywhere I go, that’s my motto” he continues with a sort of conviction in his voice as it gets more serious. “Demolitions are one of my favorite things to do in this line of work, aside from building a house from the foundation up, there’s just something about destroying a building or house that’s so much fun. You can let everything out while swinging a sledgehammer against a wall, I guess that’s why I spend so much time at my demo sites” he laughs. And Dave is right, there is nothing like taking all of your anger and frustrations and channeling it into smashing walls with sledgehammers. It’s just therapeutic for some.

As the day draws to a close there is an atmosphere of pride that is felt while moving throughout the work site. Everyone feels that we did a great job with what was done earlier in the day and we had accomplished the goal for the day. There is a lot of hard work that goes into construction, and demolition, but both require a determined and dedicated crew of men to carry out the tasks at hand without hesitation or question. These are the men that work for Dave Schwartz, and these are the men that are rebuilding a city, one block at a time.