If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, the interior of the soon-to-be razed Convention Hall at the Philadelphia Civic Center is yielding enough good stuff to fill Fort Knox.

“It’s the penultimate, the nirvana of architectural salvage,” said Mark Foster, who has anted up half the labor costs to save as many of these gems from the landfill as possible. “It is laden with material that will never be produced again.”

What kind of material? Joseph A. Weidle, executive vice president of Modern Construction Management, of Bensalem, who is supervising union workers at the site, doesn’t hide his enthusiasm as he navigates the dimly lit halls of Convention Hall, pointing it all out:

Dozens of chandeliers; leaded-glass windows; intricate brass radiator covers; fluted marble columns; and the end seats, scoreboards and maple floor of the auditorium where the Atlantic Ten played basketball and FDR was nominated for his second term as president in 1936.

And that’s just what they’ve seen so far.

University of Pennsylvania Health Systems, which owns the property at 34th Street and Civic Center Boulevard, put up $35,000 to pay for the salvage work. Foster, executive director of the Baltimore nonprofit Second Chance, an architectural-salvage company, put up the same amount.

Penn Health Systems bought the museum building, constructed in 1894, and Convention Hall, which opened in 1931, from the city in 2003 as part of its long-term development of the 19-acre Civic Center site.

The city has estimated that it ultimately will realize $43 million from the sale of the site, as well as being spared the sizable costs of demolition and environmental cleanup.

In 2001, Penn Health Systems spent about $15 million to raze the Exhibition Hall and its underground parking garage at the Civic Center.

Originally, the salvage operation was given three weeks and six workers, all union employees of Hagen Construction, of which Weidle’s firm is a subsidiary. But the work could go on until the end of the year and continue on the exterior as the buildings are demolished.

Second Chance, which operates a training program in salvage work, has sent its trainees in shifts to Philadelphia to watch Weidle’s men. In two years, the program has trained and hired 30 workers; it has an annual budget of $2 million.

“We may be a nonprofit, but we are also a business with a mission,” said Foster, who is talking with local “green-building” advocates about expanding his business and training program here. “Since we are a business, we can dig deeper than nonprofits are financially able to, and get into projects such as this one.”

Weidle would have preferred to “deconstruct” Convention Hall, disassembling the building in reverse order of construction to harvest and recycle all the materials. That wasn’t to be, although some may be done on the exterior during demolition.

“Deconstruction requires a plan,” Weidle said, one that allows you to look at all the materials in a building, not just the high-end resale items. But Weidle and Avi S. Golen, president of Construction Waste Management, of Philadelphia, and a partner in the venture, didn’t have time to develop a plan for such a huge building.

Golen, who is managing the project, had just three days to put the salvage plan together. His company, which processes new drywall as pasture and landfill cover, worked with Weidle on a green-building project downtown, and wanted him and his workers on this job.

There is a lot to be done – and some of it has to be done very carefully. As they work, a subcontractor is removing asbestos from the ceilings, required by law before Keating Co. can begin demolishing the structures to make way for yet-to-be-disclosed uses of the site by Penn Health Systems.

Weidle and Golen started with a crew of four, but after a couple of days – and as the list of what could easily be sold lengthened – they added two workers.

“They want the old bronze ticket booths disassembled, and we’ve found more plaques and light fixtures,” Weidle said.

“I’m selling things even before we can get them out of the building,” said Golen, who had just given a guided tour to a restaurant owner interested in some light fixtures.

On the first day, Foster brought one of his employees, Lenwood Whitfield, from Baltimore to make sure that work was being done right.

The two men happened on the building’s electrical room, where they found bits and pieces of glass and wiring that were used to keep the art deco chandeliers in good repair.

“You never know what you are going to find,” Foster said excitedly.

Much of what has been discovered and crated up has gone to Baltimore, unless someone Golen has brought in bought it first.

As salvage projects go, this has few equals.

Ben Riddleberger, a Baltimore architectural-antiques dealer and expert, said Convention Hall probably was “the largest-yield project” he had seen since he began his career in Chicago in the 1980s.

“The quality and sheer volume is what make this unique,” Riddleberger said. “The polychrome terra cotta and the cast-steel work is impressive. It is an outstanding collection of art deco. The only thing that is missing is traditional furnishings, but that’s understandable because the place has been out of use for so long.”

Buildings as large as the Civic Center are rarely harvested, typically because companies under contract to demolish them are on a tight schedule.

“Sometimes they take a few things out, but they have a deadline,” Riddleberger said.

At Convention Hall, asbestos removal provided the window of opportunity.

Foster’s firm was chosen because of its experience handling large amounts of deconstructed material and its 60,000-square-foot warehouse to store it – as well as the fact that he was putting up half the money for labor costs.

“We don’t have that kind of storage space here,” Weidle said, “which means much of what is harvested goes elsewhere,” especially to the South and California, where there is a huge demand.

Just 10 percent of what Convention Hall yields will be stored in Philadelphia, in a warehouse in the Northeast.