Photography by Carmen Troesser
From the outside, Perhat Lumber in Carondelet might not look like much. But for those who are rehabbing historic homes, the business is a treasure trove of clay roofing tiles, colorful bricks, old windows and doors, cast-iron gates, and other items that have been reclaimed from demolished houses around the city. Owner Karlo Perhat has been running Perhat since 1984. His son, also named Karlo Perhat, joined the company as a manager a few years ago. The younger Perhat recently spoke with us about the business.
When did your family start Perhat Lumber? My parents bought the business in 1984. It was a lumberyard. They would deconstruct homes and take the lumber out. Over the years, it transitioned into general building materials. The biggest thing we sell now is clay roofing materials off old homes.
Why the shift to reclaimed building materials? [My father] came to the U.S. in 1974, when Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia. He was a bricklayer by trade, and his family [members] were stonemasons. Ever since ’74, he’s been rehabbing old buildings. Where he’s from in Jadranovo, Croatia, houses are built out of stone and clay roofs. It’s very common for a home to be well over 200 or 300 years old. He still has that kind of mentality that homes should be built to last forever, so that’s part of reusing the building materials. These older homes were built so much better. If you can rehab them, it can prevent them from getting demolished.
Photography by Carmen Troesser
What kind of materials do you sell? Mainly clay roofing materials and old bricks but also parts like floor registers, stained glass windows, and fencing. We have a few old gas street lanterns. We also have random scrap pieces—like, if you have a left and a right of something and half got ruined, we will salvage the other half. We can match something from an older home. People have brought in old iron floor registers and they want to match with the other one in the same room or the same house. I can do that. If a roof got hailed on or a branch fell and they need a few pieces, I can match it.
How do you find your materials? If someone is demolishing a building, I’ll buy something from them, but we have so much inventory that I don’t always need to buy. I try to work only with people I know are in the business of demolishing homes. There’s a lot of looting, and I don’t want to be a part of that.
Are there items that you wish you could find more of? Definitely. I need accessories for clay roofs. What’s really hard to find nowadays are edge tiles and endcaps and all those little accessory pieces for clay roofs. There are also certain types of bricks that I can’t get ahold of, like green-glazed bricks. Some things are almost too rare. Only a small portion of the population has a very old home like that and really cares about it to want to reconstruct it as it was before. It’s obviously a lot cheaper to just put on new [materials].
What’s your hope for the business going forward? It’s a very industrial zone. The area had a lot of factories. I’ve been trying to make it less of an eyesore by planting wildflowers. I think my father saw something here years ago that was worth preserving. I’m hoping that if I show that I see something in the place now, other people might see something in the area as well.
