On a gusty February morning just a few days after a winter storm dumped 6 inches of snow on Cincinnati, four men were working away on the roof of a South Fairmont house. Taylor Swift blasted out of a busted up radio between intervals of whirring power tools.

The weather had finally warmed up enough—a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit—to let the small deconstruction crew rip up the roof of 1656 Westwood Ave., an otherwise hollowed out house that would, in just a few days, be nothing but a pile of rubble.

1656 Westwood Ave. was not a historic house—it was an old house. It was not associated with any significant events, people or architectural styles to distinguish it from any other house built in 1911, so it was deemed ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places, a group that looked into every building in the government-ordered demolition zone that 1656 Westwood Ave. fell into.

Despite this bad news, there was a small sliver of hope: Parts of 1656 Westwood Ave. would be saved from the wrecking ball. An original carved staircase would become part of an art project. Metal collected off of the roof would be recycled. Lumber ripped from floorboards, the roof and anywhere else it was intact would be collected and sold again by Building Value, a deconstruction company that salvages and resells well-preserved material from houses destined for demolition.

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