David H. Klein, a furniture maker who went into soon-to-be-torn-down Baltimore rowhouses looking for wood that had weathered the ages, died of cancer at Greater Baltimore Medical Center on Friday evening, June 6, 2014. He was 71.

Known to all as “Klein,” David was born into the Hollins Market neighborhood just before the end of World War II. After his mother’s death when he was 13, he lived with his maternal grandmother in a house that once stood in the unit block of Parkin Street across from the old Lithuanian Hall.

A longtime resident of Mayfield with a front porch view of Lake Montebello, he graduated from St. Peter the Apostle parochial school and Edmondson High School.

“I came from a neighborhood, and when you’re born into a neighborhood, you have a feel for the city,” said Klein, who made pocket change as a kid selling shopping bags at the market – buying for 3 cents and selling for a nickel.

Interviewed for a 1995 Baltimore Sun profile, Klein was asked about his preoccupation with salvaging vintage artifacts from city buildings .

“I have a bizarre affinity for anything old. Baltimore’s definitely the old and thank God for what little of it we have left.”

Taking a Seat with Willie Don and Balls Maggio

The son of a talent agent named Irv from the last gasps of burlesque on the Block – and a bit player in the early John Waters’ films “Polyester” and “Desperate Living” – Klein was an original, from a distinct era in Crabtown. On Facebook, friends remembered Klein, and those times, fondly.

“Klein’s famously sardonic sense of humor kept everyone [on the crew] loose amidst the barkers and strippers,” filmmaker Steve Yeager wrote.

“R.I.P. I won’t meet another like you anytime soon,” wrote Jim Burger, longtime photographer of all things Baltimore and a character in his own right.

If paradise is a corner table at Connolly’s on Pratt Street, the religiously irreligious Klein is slurping oysters with H.L. Mencken, Willie Don Schaefer and Balls Maggio, complaining about how Baltimore is going to the dogs.

The cantankerous, impossibly handsome, insightful and sweeter-than-he-wanted-you-to-know Klein said in the 1995 interview: “I dig taking something that was once and making it happen again.”

He prized lengths of wood – wainscoting, baseboards, trim molding and floorboards – mottled with peeling paint, layer upon layer of different colors reflecting years gone by.

Some of it came from the shambles of once-solid neighborhoods in all parts of the city, from Westport to West Fayette Street.

A Man of Many Colors

Others were found at more palatial addresses, like Rosa Ponselle’s Villa Pace, where he retrieved a barn door and an iron hinge used for a one-of-a-kind armoire.

“I go with color as I find it,” said Klein who, in the days before yellow crime scene tape, came into the possession of wooden DO NOT ENTER municipal hobby horses with which he made bookshelves.

The colors of the rainbow waited for Klein’s circular saw: yellow, pink, gray, blue, white and a lot of green.

“Green must be an easy color for people to live with,” he said. “Most of the wood I [find] has some kind of green on it.” Jazz Cabinets was what he called his business. His cabinets, beds, tables and benches – sturdy pieces of art that sold for $6,000 to $12,000 – made their way into galleries from New York to L.A. and the New York Times Magazine, as well as homes in Baltimore.

Klein wasn’t always easy to live with – as Anita Klein, his wife of almost 50 years, can attest – but it is hard to fathom living in Baltimore without him.

A tribute to David Klein will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on Monday June 30th at the Xbits Studio, 3601 Clipper Mill Road in Baltimore, 21211.