West Loop resident Moshe Tamssot went to great lengths to get a brick from the former Harpo Studios site, which is now being demolished in the West Loop. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay

WEST LOOP — Call them the "brick raiders."

As demolition continues at the former Harpo Studios site at Washington and Carpenter — making way for McDonald's new corporate headquarters — a black market of Harpo bricks could emerge.

When demolition began on the West Loop site, former Harpo employees and West Loop residents flocked to the site to ask construction workers to pass them a brick or two — momentos of the century-old building and the longtime home of "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Radio producer Scott Miller, who worked on the Harpo Studios campus for five years, collected bricks from the West Loop site in July. [Scott Miller]

But a few days after demolition began, demo crews were banned from handing out the bricks any longer.

Before the ban, the bricks were going "like hot cakes," said Moshe Tamssot, a West Loop resident who is chronicling the Harpo demolition.

"Someone has clear orders," Tamssot said. "Everyone from the security guards at nighttime to daytime, even the construction guys are absolutely clear that they can not give people bricks."

A man who identified himself as the Heneghan Wrecking foreman overseeing the demolition site said that directive came straight from the site's developer Sterling Bay.

"No one is allowed to come here and get bricks. Orders from the owner," he said on the site Wednesday.

It's unclear exactly why the developer enacted the brick ban, but it likely is related to ensuring safety at the site. Sterling Bay officials did not immediately return calls Wednesday.

Tamssot, an inventor, said he wasn't deterred by the ban. While two guards watch over the site at night, trying to stop "brick raiders," Tamssot said he was able to elude the pair.

Using a rake and pond nets, Tamssot was able to pull a few bricks past the construction site's barriers.

"I just give them away to whoever wants them," Tamssot said. "I had a whole backlog of requests that I was able to fullfill."

There was reportedly, up until now, ways around the brick ban, too. Tamssot said the night guards told him that they would toss a brick over the fence for $10 or two for $25.

"That's Chicago," he said.

Tamssot said he hopes the remaining bricks — a symbol of Oprah Winfrey's legacy in Chicago — don't end up in a landfill. Instead, they could be auctioned off for charity or given to Chicago's kids as inspirational gifts.

"She was, if you think about it, the most successful Black woman ever. And this is the last physical monument to her being in Chicago, and it's torn down so quickly," Tamssot said. "Kids are going to come here and they're not going to know the history of this place at all."

A brick from the former main Harpo Studios building, now being demolished in the West Loop. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]

McDonald's headquarters

Demolition of the Harpo campus, which opened in 1988, will make way for a new building that thousands of McDonald's corporate employees will call home come 2018.

West Loop-based developer Sterling Bay plans to build a new nine-story, 600,000-square-foot building to be built at the block-long site.

McDonald's plans to rent 80 percent of the available office space in the new $250 million building. The company has signed a 15-year lease.

McDonald's officials will move about 2,000 employees into the new Chicago headquarters, according to Burnett.

As the Harpo campus is torn down, Sterling Bay plans to honor Oprah Winfrey's legacy in some way in the new development. Sterling Bay Principal Andy Gloor said his mother and brother both have worked for Harpo Studios.

"We are definitely going to do something to remember who was there," the developer said.

More than half of the main Harpo Studios building has now been demolished. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]

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