Fall of the House of Young

It's the end of an infamous chapter in Unionville's history: most of Tony Young's mansion in Springdell has been torn down.
The home of the convicted swindler was bought by Richard Hayne, the billionaire founder of the Urban Outfitters empire, who added it to the former Thouron property that he owns just across Thouron Road. Mr. Hayne has been building quite a compound at the site and has told the township that he wants to replace the former Young mansion with a personal fitness center for himself and his wife.
So on Monday, Oct. 10, I got home from the grocery store at about 2:30 p.m. and spotted the news of the demolition on Facebook. Without even putting away my milk and lettuce, I got back in the car and raced over there (once a journalist, always a journalist...). One of Mr. Hayne's workers very kindly showed me where I could park safely.
What a spectacle! The amazingly skilled demolition guy used his giant excavator with surgical precision, knocking down one cinder block at a time when he needed to and then ripping out a bay window in one fell swoop. When he reached a piece of copper flashing, he removed it with the excavator's jaws like he was tweezing a stray eyebrow and then dropped it into a separate Dumpster for salvage.
A lot of the interior of the house, including the mantelpieces and window glass, had already been removed (I imagine a fair amount of the beautiful interior details were sold to recover funds), and it was strange to see a built-in third-storey cupboard and a staircase open to the sky.
Meanwhile some landscaping guys were using muscle power, and crowbars, to dig out the cobblestones that had edged Tony's driveway.
Tony now has far more humble digs: he is serving his 210-month sentence 756 miles away, in the Federal Correctional Institution at Jesup in southeast Georgia.