Historic Pewabic tiles destroyed in Belle Isle fountain restoration

[Baselinepunk]

I have to agree with some of the comments above. Unfortunately, there is only so much you can do. Usually [[and generally), a Condition Assessment is done first off to find out historical information, see just what is there, what state of degradation it is in, what needs to be fixed, what can be saved and perhaps most importantly, what does the client want.

Money is usually the biggest thing. Most things can be restored back to a specific period of historical significance -- but most of the time it takes money; and some times lots of money. Detroit Parks and Wreck, to me, seems to be out of their league when it comes to historical items. I'm not very fluid with all of the historic districts of Detroit, but I'm surprised that Detroit Parks and Wreck didn't have to someone/s approval [[who would be versed in historical preservation within the city); who signed off on this project at the City level? Was it just the Wreck Dept?

One thing that doesn't take a lot of money is an informed client. Seeing from the surface, no federal monies appear to be used, so there was not a Section 106 needed; that could provided more in depth information about the object.

You could have gotten contextual replacements for those tiles; it would have just taken time and ..... money. Yep, it's too bad that this happened; I think there could have been a better way to go about it. I'm sure that folks around here would have been more than happy to contribute a few bottle returns for this to be done right.

BTW -- the contractors who are working on this project are historic preservation / building conservation people who are trained to do this type of stuff. They would not do anything like this, IMHO, without someone either telling them to do it and signing off on it. This may have been one of the courses of actions they provided; but again IMHO, I don't see this "solution" being the only "solution" that the contractor would have provided to the client.