Down with the old. . .

Time demands change and nothing could be truer in the field of construction. In my neighborhood, it's the construction of Columbia-St. Mary's new hospital and the destruction of an old medical office building that once housed the St. Mary's Nursing School.

I'd watched this building be prepared for demolition - windows gone, doorways boarded up and nothing but early morning sunlight pouring through openings that had long been closed up. But it was the brick by brick process of the tearing down that caught my eye.

I watched the human-directed robot make brick and stone collaspe like legos. It took less than 5 minutes to take down a column of brick and mortar and I reflected on the number of muscles and minutes it would have taken to put it all up.

When he and the robot neared the large stone that formed the front, main entrance, I felt a twinge of sadness. Here it took but a single pneumatic shove to loosen this heavy stone from its moors and see it tumble down to its demise. When he tried the cornice piece at the top of the arch, it held. Perhaps it was pure stuborness on the stone's part - it wasn't ready to go just yet. In what seemed like a show of respect, he moved away from emblematic piece of stonework and found a weaker point to work on. Another day.