Buy a sliver of New York City -- a wood sliver, that is

Whenever I hear about reclaimed wood, inevitably I think of falling-down barns in Vermont or Iowa, and the carpenters who dismantle them lovingly before they disintegrate back into the earth. But the other night I met someone who works for Sawkill Lumber Co., a company which gets its reclaimed lumber from the most unlikely place.

The New York-based business actually takes wood from the many sites that are being torn down in the ever evolving landscape that is New York City real estate. The city has always followed a cycle of teardown and rebuild, and a lot of these great buildings are falling to the wrecking ball. So many of the 19th-century stone buildings in New York were framed with thick timbers, or used wood on the ceilings and floors. We're talking the good stuff here: old growth, tight grain, beautiful colors. Sawkill is just trying to get to it before it ends up in a landfill, where it won't as easily return to the earth as a rotting rural barn.

And it's not just the buildings that get "saved," so to speak. Sawkill also gets some amazing Alaskan yellow cedar from the ubiquitous wood water towers that dot tenement rooftops and define the gritty look of the skyline. 

Definitely check out their goods. Play your cards right, and you might end up owning a coveted piece of New York real estate after all.