Farewell Floor

I’d like to report a crime.

When we renovated our apartment, we made the tragic decision to tear up these wonderful, beautiful, amazing, 100-year-old wood factory floors. This little thread is me offering my respect and thanks to this beautiful, functional surface.

We walked on this warm, soft, creaky floor for five years. It was polished smooth by ten million steps before we arrived.

This building began its life at the turn of the century as a cigar factory. It also spent some time as a cookie factory. These floors saw it all.

It’s hard to describe just how against my nature and values it is to erase something so perfect that has existed for so long and still functions. The truth is that the folks who developed this building into artist lofts in the 80s didn’t think about: Sound. At all. Not even once.

If you want a perfect recipe for neighbor hatred, separate their living spaces with two to three inches of wood.

We deemed this change necessary first for sound insulation. Then for design. Then for a bunch of other technical/code reasons which take too long to explain.

I trust that our new floors will last at least another hundred years, but I’ll always miss these.

Thank you old Philadelphia factory floors. You kept our steps warm and soft through challenging times. You held up our daughter for her first crawl. You were perfect.