Certainly a glut of HGTV reality shows about home renovation has given salvage items a new shelf life - homeowners are more confident incorporating an old high school locker as a broom closet, or laying 100-year-old pine floors in a newly built house.
But when Philadelphia Salvage opens on Carpenter Lane April 1, it will join an industry with a long tradition of flux. To succeed is to understand that not everything old is new - changing tastes and economic swings require store owners to constantly adjust to new trends, despite century-old inventory.
Of the Philadelphia-area salvage stores, the mainstays are Architectural Antiques Exchange, which has been in the same location on Second Street in Northern Liberties since the 1970s. ReStore opened in 2003 in Port Richmond, and Provenance was created in 2005, first located in Fairmount and now in a bigger space on Canal Street near Columbus Boulevard.
When Architectural Antiques Exchange owner Mark Charry entered the business full time in 1971, he bought mantels and tile from the wreckers tearing down Victorian homes for Temple University's campus expansion.
"That set the stage for a lot of beautiful wrecked material," he said. Victorian design was just becoming popular again, and Charry was easily able to resell what he salvaged.
For years, many of his biggest customers were theme restaurants like the Spaghetti Warehouse seeking to create a nostalgic, quirky atmosphere by decorating with antiques and kitsch.
But in the late 1980s, the number of Charry's restaurant clients declined, and he began to notice an uptick in interest from homeowners. Magazines popularized the idea of using one or two antique pieces to spice up an otherwise bland new space, and the eventual housing boom fueled even more demand for home decor items. When the bubble burst, many of Charry's smaller customers were eliminated.
