"What I cannot understand [[in this case) is for the company to neglect to call Pewabic. Not calling them smacks to me of a hurried demolition. It indicates to me that they didn't want to call in an expert [[and possibly waste time and money) on saving the tiles."

I completely understand the spirit of your post, and I too am pretty goddamn tired of seeing the entire historic integrity of the City of Detroit being destroyed. However, I cannot agree, at this point, that the company doing the work is being neglectful. I'm studying right now at EMU to do this type of work; I can't see this company taking it upon itself to say "fuck it, tear that shit out". What they are doing has been agreed upon by them and the client. If there is any shred of neglect, it would be with the City Parks and Wreck dept, or who ever signed off on this plan; the client.

The contractor involved has a very long line of projects completed. Take a long at their website and you'll see some work done by them on some very familiar structures around this town and the country. As an FYI; I don't work for them, or defending them any further than I don't see this contractor being a bunch of typical fly by night hacks.

Unfortunately, this type of situation is far too common around this area. It's one of the reasons I doing what I'm doing at school. Hopefully, attitudes will change around here some time soon, or else we will loose at more than we have already.