>And if it was your house that got set on fire?

I mean, you talked about MY house, so yeah I felt personnally attacked.

In my original answer I just pointed out that in our economies the compensation for your time spent is monetary, and in general once that has been paid you have no ties to the produtcs of your work anymore. You are the ones who right away jumped the ship and talked about something totally different, i.e. my house, that I paid with my money and that is then tied to me. And this is totally different from talking about objects that people spent time working on but then sold and where properly compensated for it.

For the town hall if you are talking about bordeux, it was only the door that leads to a courtyard in a building with multiple exits designed to safely get crowds of people out in case of an emergency. No one was at risk of death or serious injury, and people where more sad for the historical value of the gate than anything.

edit: rereading your original comment, I might even have misunderstood it, but you could have kept the discussion civilised and discuss that, instead of right away going the emotion way.