Low wages for available skilled workers made it affordable for builders to add elaborate stone decorations in places on buildings that few people could see.

“I said, "The only person who can see it is the people in my apartment- ... and the people in the apartment next to them." Someone, someone was willing to spend that money because the builders who built that could hire-”

“... skilled people at such low wages that they could make them, uh, do the decorations to make a building beautiful up on, uh, at, at floors that nobody's gonna see th- gonna see them because people came cheap.”