Demolition

“ Mere demolition—demolition which is not the first step in the advance of reform and reconstruction, the preliminary removal of ancient rubbish for the erection of newer and nobler structures—is worse than futile. ”

“ Whether those responsible for the complete demolition of the ancient structure when it threatened to fall and become a heap of ruins were right or wrong in their decision is a technical question on which very few persons are now competent to give an opinion. ”

“ The demolition of much of the sea-wall to make way for it and furnish materials for embankments, is a suggestive symbol of the social and religious reconstruction, which is tearing up old foundations, and using the labors of ages past for that which is to be. ”

“ Even women and children hurried to join in the welcome task of indiscriminate destruction. No defenders on this occasion barred the gates of the temple to the Christian hosts. The sublime solitude of the tenantless building was outraged and invaded in an instant. Statues were broken, gold was carried off, doors were splintered into fragments; but here for a while the progress of demolition was delayed. Those to whom the labour of ruining the outward structure had been confided were less successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. ”

“ The extent and scale of the rebuilding program in one area, the civic-improvement plans which accompanied the work in that district, the record time in which relief houses were completed, the marvellous speed at which the demolition companies cleared away the debris acted as models and stimuli to all inhabitants. The process of speeding-up spread like a great contagion, until the most hardened pessimist began to marvel at the recuperation daily enacted before his eyes. ”

“ They that break down need some vision at least of a building up, and it is the new edifice that is the chief thing. The world [156] of thought to-day is infested with critics and destroyers and may well be tired of them. It is too much in need of constructors to have any thanks to spare for new Voltaires and Humes. Let us admit that demolition is the necessity of some hours. We look back on the ruins of Bastilles and temples that served the uses of tyranny, and even in the domain of faith there have been fortresses to throw down and ramparts that made evil separations among men. ”

“ Stone-built houses last much longer, but when a fire or demolition after a siege has taken place three or four times, a good deal of rubbish is left spread over the surface and it accumulates with the ages. ”

“ The demolition of ruinous forts and old walls, filling up ravines, destroying gardens, cutting down groves, raising the parapets to six or seven feet high, repairing and widening the ramparts, extending the bastions, retrenching three of the gates, covering the fourth with an outwork, and excavating a ditch ten feet in depth and twelve in width round the whole of the walls, were works of great labour, which called forth the efforts of every individual. ”

“ Even when blasting with dynamite old foundation walls of brick and mortar, a few yards from the pavement, [46] nothing will be done for the safety of the passer-by. The casualty columns of the daily papers are eloquent evidence of the risks the ignorant labourers run who are employed in this work of demolition. ”

“ Seldom an old house is threatened with demolition but there is some protest, more perhaps from the old associations than from any particular architectural merit the building may have." We have many pangs of regret when we see such wanton destruction. ”

“ Men, alike stunned with the extent and suddenness of the catastrophe, were moved with sympathy for those instantly involved in the ruin, and struck with terror at the demolition of a bulwark, by the destruction of which all found their own safety endangered. ”

“ Now it had come to pass that this acidulated lady, essaying fresh flurries of progression, discovering higher passional affinities and new duties of demolition, proving that in Church and State every brick was loose and every timber rotten, testifying ever to the existence of a certain harmonial mortar by which the rubbish of a demolished civilization could be rebuilt into unexceptionable forms,—it happened that this woman, having towered for one proud moment at the very apex of her mission, slipped suddenly into the Romish communion, and was no more seen of men. ”

“ Through consultations including each party that agreed to the demolition, the demolishing party should rebuild the demolished building or structure, or it may, in accordance with national rules, give monetary compensation for the destroyed building or structure that is calculated at market rates. ”

“ Many isolated farm houses were destroyed by marauding parties of soldiers, or, when they proved too substantial for instant demolition, were rendered uninhabitable by removal of the doors and windows. ”

“ Innumerable vagabonds and vagrants are still worse off, for, with no shelter or fireside, they sleep under the stars, and as they are without anything to care for, they are disposed to pull everything down.—Under the double pressure of insurrection and theory the demolition begins, while the fury of destruction goes on increasing until nothing is left of the razed edifice but the soil it stood on. ”

“ They may not be openly assailed at first. They are usually sapped and undermined by construction, preparatory to their entire demolition. But what construction may fail to accomplish, the open assaults of fanaticism, or the lust of power, or the violence of party, will, in the end, prostrate. ”

“ There is no evidence of an elementary regard for human life in the streaming streets of riotous traffic. Often have I seen buildings in course of demolition with no better guard against falling bricks and blocks of cement than some rough pack-sheet stretched in front. ”

“ Success, it was evident, must come, if at all, from a distance—but how?
One suggested slinging a rope from window to window of adjacent houses across the path of the broken chimney-stack—a good method of rescue had circumstances lent themselves to it. They did not. On the ruin side a wide space intervened; on the other, the sister house to that which had fallen, and which was also included in the order of demolition, was itself affected by the loss of its support, and leaned in a sinister manner, its party walls bulged and rent towards the scene of devastation. ”

“ For destruction of railway trackage, bridges, and stations in enemy-controlled territory, it is necessary to gather together demolition materials. Troops must be trained in the preparation and use of demolitions, and a demolition unit must be organized in each regiment. ”

“ That the extensive demolition of small houses which has been carried out of late years, under various railway and improvement Acts, has, no doubt, been in some respects beneficial, by removing numerous damp, ill-ventilated, and dilapidated courts, but that, as the promoters had other objects than the welfare of the poor in view, these schemes have generally been so framed and carried out as to cause much suffering to the persons displaced, and in some cases greatly to increase the overcrowding and unhealthiness of neighbouring districts. ”

“ It is not certain that all these fragmentary bodies pre-exist in reality, and it is no more certain that a simple bringing of them together represents the primitive edifice. Materials of demolition from a house that has been pulled down give no idea of its natural architectural character. ”

“ More than ten thousand persons were constantly at work, morning, noon, and night, until the demolition was accomplished. Grave magistrates, great nobles, fair ladies, citizens and their wives, beggars and their children, all wrought together pell-mell. ”

“ When the fort or castle is built, each party uses its best efforts for the demolition of the other, but no one is allowed to make use of his hands in the demolition of either castle or fort; battering-rams may alone be employed. ”

“ In eleven it has led to discussion; in two or three it has led to the demolition of buildings, but not to their erection. Is there not a want of ordinary seeing in our moral life? Could we hope to solve a single scientific problem on the methods on which we are content to live? ”

“ If he stays long enough he will punch holes, make the clean walls black, and ruin the room, so that the food can not be properly prepared. The pictures explained the work of demolition, which the children readily understood, as they knew of many people whose brains and stomachs had been destroyed in that way. ”

“ How rapidly the work of demolition goes on! Will a century hence find one of the red race upon this continent? Certainly not, if it shall accomplish so much as the century past. There is not one for every ten, then ”

“ This operation is of course very dangerous, and is generally impossible unless the fire of the defence along the ditch is previously silenced. To expedite the work of the miner a gun is sometimes brought down through the gallery, and the face of the wall is shattered by its fire before the miner is “attached.” 178
CHAPTER IV.
BLASTING AND DEMOLITIONS. BLASTING. 94. Blasts are small mines used generally for breaking up rocks, or masonry in demolitions. ”

“ Those who had axes and had spent their fury on the movables, chopped and tore down the doors and window frames, broke up the flooring, hewed away the rafters, and buried men who lingered in the upper rooms, in heaps of ruins. Some searched the drawers, the chests, the boxes, writing-desks, and closets, for jewels, plate, and money; while others, less mindful of gain and more mad for destruction, cast their whole contents into the courtyard without examination, and called to those below, to heap them on the blaze. ”

“ The chances are that, like most of the Belgian army, he is no longer treading the gray streets of those demolished cities, but whatever golden streets there may be in the City Celestial. War is race suicide. It kills the best and leaves behind the undermuscled and the under-brained to propagate the species.
Striking farther into the heart of the ruins, we beheld in a section all burned and shattered to the ground a building which stood straight up like a cliff intact and undamaged amidst the general wreckage. ”

“ DEVASTATION. You have to see this village as it now is – broken and in ruins, with not a roof intact in any street or byway, with the marks of shot and shell and destruction and devastation everywhere, with church and chateau alike stripped of their beauty and fair proportions – to understand what the ravages of war mean, how pitiless it is, how it defaces and destroys the patient labour of generations of men, the industry of once happy communities, and how it roots out and scatters family bliss and social affection and all the sanctities and tenderness of civilised existence. ”

“ Compare DECEPTION; INSANITY.
Antonyms: DEMOLISH. Synonyms:
A building, monument, or other structure is demolished when reduced to a shapeless mass; it is razed when leveled with the ground; it is destroyed when its structural unity is gone, whether or not its component parts remain. An edifice is destroyed by fire or earthquake; it is demolished by bombardment; it is ruined when, by violence or neglect, it has become unfit for human habitation. ”

“ Here are ruins indeed, but on closer inspection, inexplicable ruins, for their collapse seems to date from yesterday, and the crevices and gaps are unnaturally white among the greyish tints of the façades or towers, and here and there, through broken windows, on the interior walls is visible the glittering of gilding. Indeed it is not time that has wrought these ravages—time had spared these wonders—nor yet until our own days, even in the midst of the most terrible upheavals and most ruthless conquest, had men ever attempted to destroy them. ”

“ In spite of all the excitement and fear caused by the spreading fire, the neighbours looked upon the Master Builder as an enthusiast and a madman, and upon James Harmer as a poor dupe, to allow such destruction of property. No sooner were both sets of buildings destroyed than men were set to work with buckets and chains to drench the dusty heaps of the ruins with water, nor would the Master Builder permit the workers to slacken their efforts until the whole mass of demolished ruin was reduced to the condition of a soppy pulp. ”

“ These terrible vortices are never still and never without their debris. London is such a maelstrom, so is Paris, so is New York.
The world also has its colossal eddy, but they that drift upon the world’s currents are derelicts, not debris; it is true both are wreckage, but there is a wide difference between them. Debris is scum; derelicts are wrecks. Scum from scum arises; derelicts may be the wrecks of greatness. Debris is unnamed; the House of Orleans is a derelict, and its princes have died by the wash of the China Sea. ”

“ Most of the bodies are [Pg 474] taken from the ruins here. As far as you can see there is nothing but wreckage—yes, wreckage, from which the foulest odors are continually rising and in the midst of which countless big fires are burning. Are you not almost discouraged at the idea of clearing so many acres up? Well, it does look like an endless task.
"There, you see that brick building? It is called the Fourth Ward School House. Do you want to go in? Piled up at one side are coffins—little coffins, medium sized coffins, large coffins—coffins for children, women and men. ”

“ At a cost of half a million of money (English) , houses worth twelve millions were destroyed. Why? France was mad. So hurriedly was this destruction effected, that hundreds of the workmen themselves were buried in the ruins.
Life, however, was cheap.
Rags only were to be seen—a decent dress was equivalent to condemnation. The city was dead but for the thunder of fallen houses, the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry mowing down suspected people, and the shrill cry of the ragged as they marked another head fall beneath the guillotine knife. ”