The big, fancy town houses the nouveaux riches had recently built to withstand all eternity fell prey to wrecking balls, one by one. In most cases, their interiors, bought in Europe along with priceless art objects of great historical value, ended up in the trash heap. In answer to the question of whether they couldn’t be preserved, one demolition contractor summarized the mood in New York in those days with “I don’t deal in secondhand goods.”
