Brick rustling in St. Louis

If you talk to people who lived in SW DC before the time of urban renewal, they will tell you stories of people coming in and taking off pieces of buildings before the buildings were torn down. I've heard about this in Detroit too, from someone I know who was a community organizer there during that time.

Peter Sefton calls our attention to Bob Powers, who does the “Built St. Louis” website. Bob has put up a page on the latest menace to the city’s building stock--people stealing bricks from extant buildings. (Similar to people stealing copper from buildings, perhaps with less risk, but less profit. See "City sets up memorial fund for man electrocuted stealing copper wire" and "Life at $3 a pound: Thieves dying in copper wire thefts.")

Powers has photos catching the perps in the act.

Above: brick rustlers harvest 1939 Montgomery in St. Louis Place. Photo from May 6, 2007. Click here to read more about this increasingly widespread problem.