04.24.24
Regan's workshop in the Lemp Brewery, St. Louis, MO

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Regan is a carpenter and a self-described "salvage guy," who supplied salvaged architectural materials for Cementland.

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Daniil:

How did you and Bob Cassilly start working together?

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Regan:

I just happened to end up Downtown on the day that City Museum opened. I was in the process of moving a lot of block stone off of a job in North St. Louis, and I just ended up there, talking to Bob's ex-wife, actually, Gail Cassilly. Ended up talking to her and just got hooked up to get big blocks of marble stone and stuff. What they did with that I don’t know, but it was just kind of cool. 

So I met her and she hooked me up with him. Gail hooked me up with Bob. And I think myself and Bob clicked, because I really liked what he was doing down there, and I did not charge him what a lot of people would have charged him. A lot of people figured he was rich, and thus they would get a million dollars for everything they sold him. I just looked at it as a wage earning job to deliver stone to him, and that became a lot of other things. If I acquired something pretty cool, I would let him know. Almost everything I took to him he was interested in. So for myself, we lost that. I just don't have anybody to sell big stuff to anymore. A lot of stuff gets scrapped or bulldozed, and we could never find the real market for it other than Bob.

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Daniil:

So was that your involvement with Cementland too? You were selling them salvaged architectural bits?

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Regan:

Yeah. Plus, when we got that deal going on with the Central Library, we hauled a lot of motors and big pumps and stuff like that, because he was going to flood the thing with water. He needed to get the water out of the river, and it was just a real good fit. So for me, it was kind of like a full time job for several months. Just getting stuff out there and getting it delivered to him. It was a good hook up for him and I both.

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Daniil:

Can you talk a little bit more about the Central Library deal?

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Regan:

They just had a lot of stuff that they would have typically scrapped, and we bought it. I should say Bob bought it. A lot of stuff that would have gone to scrap metal: big electric motors, big pumps driven by these electric motors, and cabinetry, and doors. and everything you could possibly put in a big building. Which he had a couple of—like a visitor center, you might call it, when you approached in and the offices. Everything you'd want; everything you would, in theory, need to finish out a structure. He needed it, so we took doors, cabinets, glass, and all kinds of things. Lots and lots of stuff.

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Daniil:

Were you working with them on site at all? 

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Regan:

Nah. I was loading and unloading. I was supposed to actually go to work for him a week before he died. But I put him off. Then he died. I'm a carpenter, thus I would have been building out the visitor center, the ticket office—the corporate part of it.

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Daniil:

So would you say that they were pretty close to going public then?

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Regan:

Oh my god. They planned on opening the upcoming spring, and this was fall or winter, six months before. He and the crew would work at City Museum in the winter, and in summertime they would go out to Cementland and do their summer work there. So he kept his guys busy just doing incredible things all full time, however many people he had on staff, maybe half a dozen. He had a great crew, just candid people. They all got along great. And they did great things. 

People will tell you Bob was an incredible artist, but to me, his magic really came in the fact that he was inspirational to a lot of people, to his crew. People wanted to work for him and would get stuff done for him. He put a bunch of artists together, and typically that’s not the way it works, but they were able to all get along and make some incredible things. City Museum speaks for that. So I look at Cementland as being City Museum times ten, you know. One huge canvas. Bob, catch him sometimes just sitting around, looking at the place, just thinking I guess. And coming up with the ideas that he did.

I think every one of those guys are proud of what they did. Proud of what they were part of creating or in a lot of cases created themselves on Bob's dime, on Bob's paycheck. To get half a dozen people—I don't know what to call them, construction type of artists and sculptors—to work together and create something which is as fascinating as the City Museum is a real talent. I couldn't get six people to work together like that, to create something big.

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Daniil:

If Cementland was finished, what do you think the visitor experience would be like?

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Regan:

There was a lot of water involved. I don't really know, but I believe they were going to build a skate park there. I would assume they were going to do some bungee jumping kind of stuff. It would have been a great big playground built out of really interesting materials, be it for a school field trip or a summer day with the family. Kind of a non-corporate type of Six Flags or Disneyland; I look at it like it would have been that big. It would have been that cool, that really neat to visit.

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Daniil:

What were some of the structures in Cementland that the materials you were getting were going towards?

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Regan:

Well, everything we just stockpiled. I don't know what he was going to do with all that glass, but I'm thinking it was like 10,000 square feet of material. Bob would say, “If you got enough of anything, you can make a pretty profound piece of art out of it.” This glass was incredible, being a three quarter inch deck and three foot by three foot panels. He would have found something fascinating to do with it.

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Daniil:

And that was the glass from Central Library?

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Regan: 

That was the glass. We got all the windows out of there, and I don't know if we got them all, but they were arch top windows, all clad in copper. And where he would have put those I don't know, but they were incredible, very intricate copper clad windows that we just stockpiled in one of the buildings, and there were a bunch of them. 

And then Bob was gone. That was probably one of the first things that people went in, pulled all the scrap metal off, took them to the scrap yard. We spent… God, it was some hard work getting those windows out there. I mean, we spent a week or ten days hauling the windows out of there and taking them out to Cementland and reloading them ourselves and everything. It was just a lot of work.

And we got all the bookshelves, because when the Central Library was taking bids on [renovation], they had one design group that was going to reuse everything and another design group that was going to build everything new from the doors to trims, just pretty much getting everything removed and replaced. And they went with the design group that was going to just get rid of the old stuff and bring in new. 

I mean, I would rather they use the old stuff, but I'm glad that I was able to be there, that I had a connection there to hook up with those guys. And I say a connection to get it, but also that Bob was available to do something with it. And like I say, I consider myself kind of a rarity in that. I think he just appreciated the fact that I wasn't trying to retire on his dime. I was paying myself a decent wage, but it just worked out. I think he had a little bit of respect for me; he felt like I was on his side, on his team, not trying to gauge him every time we connected.

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Daniil:

Was that close to his death when you started working together and you were bringing stuff from Central Library? 

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Regan: 

Oh yeah. We started on the library thing early summer, and he probably died in the middle of October. At that time, I was bringing in all the doors, if I remember right, which would have been used in the office, the corporate side of Cementland—money side of Cementland, I should say. 

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Daniil: 

How do you feel about people going to Cementland now?

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Regan: 

Well, I have no problem with people that are respectful of the place, but people go in there and vandalize, and they light stuff on fire. If I saw somebody doing it, I would sure have a hard time not addressing the situation. I've actually had people ask me to go out there and help them load stuff up. It's like, you want me to help you go out there and steal stuff? Not yours. It was, I guess, Giovanna [Cassilly’s] at that time. And she seemed to be indifferent to the things getting trashed, because I would have to guess she could have afforded some full time security out there. 

I did look at it like a wasted summer. I could have done some productive things, for what I do being a salvage guy. Pretty much everything we took out there got thrashed. They scrapped… I knew the guy that did the scrapping. He got all this scrap metal, everything we took over there. Motors, iron—anything that was recyclable to his scrap yard, he took. The guy got paid 50% of whatever they brought in, and it was just painful. God, we busted our asses near there. We could have skipped out completely and just taken it straight to the scrapyard, made a good chunk of change. It was sickening, watching the place fall apart. And like I said, people asked me to go out there, and when I started investigating it, they were going out there to steal it. They had no right to get it. Didn’t matter how I felt about Giovanna—it's not yours. 

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Daniil:

Did you ever end up going to Cementland after Bob’s passing?

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Regan: 

I went there to investigate, to look at the situation with what we were going to need to get this big, beautiful iron staircase out of there. And so I went out there, and that's when I figured out that they really had no right to be there. A renowned local guy. Everybody knew Bob well, and he figured out he had an omen from God or something like that on him. It was ridiculous when we got down to it. I want nothing to do with that. I doubt he did anything with it; I doubt it ever came to fruition. Bob got a hell of an incredible collection out there, so it's a shame that so much of it gets scrapped. 

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Daniil:

So why do you think the project stalled after Bob’s passing? 

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Regan: 

Why did it fail? Because people didn't like working for Giovanna as they did for Bob. Bob had a way. There was a kind of magic about him that made people want to be a part of what he was doing. And he had some really high quality people, very talented people, be they welders or rigging guys, guys who could get stuff moved, stone sculptors. Incredible people out there making things.

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Daniil:

Do you think there is anything else that land could be used for if not Cementland?

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Regan: 

I think Bob had the most practical idea, to have it just be a fun park. At the same time, to me, there would’ve been some pretty fascinating educational things about taking all this salvage material and building the incredible things that he was building out there too. He had those huge, I think like 12 feet across, big cylinders full of water that you can make incredible sound with. You get a six or ten year old kid out there—just food for the brain. It would have been a great thing for kids, like City Museum. You can be in City Museum at any age and be fascinated by what he got done.

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Daniil:

What do you do now?

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Regan: 

I used to do buildouts, did some restaurants and installations for people: doors, stone gardens, and stuff like that. There's so much salvage out there, but it doesn't move quick enough for me, and I’m just out of room. I thoroughly enjoy what I do. However, I don't have… Help is very difficult to come by these days, and it’s… I work by myself a lot. And working by yourself, you don't get anywhere near as much done. So bringing it in and processing it, meaning cleaning it or fixing it or sealing it, consumes all my time. Why, you looking for a job?

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