?Rescued' items serve role in new construction

|tab|

New construction does not always garner new hardware and materials. Often it's the vintage, hard-to-find pieces that add new life to a project.|ret||ret||tab|

Two Springfield businesses focus on bringing those architectural artifacts to builders and residents alike: Cross Creek Hills Farms, a spin-off business of Touch Designs Inc. owned by Mike Hill and Jeanne Waters-Hill, and Tom Hem-bree's Aesthetic Concerns Ltd.|ret||ret||tab|

From the common items like light fixtures, fireplace mantles, doors, wooden beams and iron railings to the more ob-scure items, Hill and Hembree scour the countryside in pursuit of that next rare piece.|ret||ret||tab|

"Our jobs range anywhere from cowboy to contemporary and anything in between," Hill said. "You never know what is going to come through next. That's what makes it fun for all of us. We really enjoy it because of the variety."|ret||ret||tab|

|ret||ret||tab|

On the road again |ret||ret||tab|

Hill said six days of every month are spent outside of his office/shop at 1228 E. Guinevere looking for something new to "rescue," as he puts it.|ret||ret||tab|

Hembree also knows about being on the road: he has been searching the globe for vintage items for 22 years. Many of his travels have been to Europe, he said, but they have been minimized of late due to higher shipping costs. |ret||ret||tab|

"I just shifted my emphasis from bringing stuff from Europe and the U.K. and concentrating on American salvage," he said. "It has just gotten to be almost cost-prohibitive to do that."|ret||ret||tab|

Now he goes about two or three times a year. His company, Aesthetic Concerns is at 326 Boonville.|ret||ret||tab|

One of the larger items he has salvaged from overseas is the stained glass window at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church on West Republic Road. He discovered it in England. |ret||ret||tab|

Other items are the mahogany-framed windows that he retrieved from the London Underground. The windows can now be seen in Bass Pro Shop's Hem-mingway's Restaurant.|ret||ret||tab|

Larry Owen, director of Bass Pro's fabrication shops, said about 50 percent of the company's stores are built with recycled materials.|ret||ret||tab|

He said the company has good relations with both Hill and Hembree so Bass Pro can have dibs on their unique discoveries.|ret||ret||tab|

"Locally, that's who we go to," Owen said, but "we buy from brokers across the country."|ret||ret||tab|

Outside of Springfield is where the competition gets fierce, added Hembree. "We're all looking basically for the same things," he said, and the winner is the one who gets to it first.|ret||ret||tab|

|ret||ret||tab|

To the rescue|ret||ret||tab|

"It's just like treasure hunting," said Hill, who has always been intrigued by scuba dive searches for artifacts. "Since we're in the Midwest ... we're doing our own Midwestern treasure hunting and making those things available to people for reuse. It's recycling."|ret||ret||tab|

Hill has "recycled" such unique items as an iron bird cage elevator, bank vaults, teller cages and Post Office paraphernalia. |ret||ret||tab|

He also has found that old wooden trusses some as big as 50-feet across have become much sought after by home builders. In fact, it was the construction of his personal home that aided the development of his business.|ret||ret||tab|

Hill and his wife designed their home with aged timbers and limestone in mind, and through the acquisition of those artifacts, they discovered a need. |ret||ret||tab|

"It just became an opportunity to make those beams available to other builders it's kind of popular right now," Hill said. "The word got out ... and I'm not only selling beams to the local market here, but I'm selling them nationwide."|ret||ret||tab|

Hill said he has made purchases from as far east as Pennsylvania and as far west as Montana for the most part buying items that date from between 1850 and 1920. |ret||ret||tab|

The beauty about it is that "one thing leads to another," he said. While he was loading a 1927 Ford Model T he recently purchased in north Missouri, a man told him about his 1927 Chevy ladder truck. "I'm going to buy that and have it available," he said.|ret||ret||tab|

In that same networking fashion, Hembree has developed relationships with about six people, whom he calls "pickers," who look for items across the country that he might be interested in purchasing.[[In-content Ad]]