Author: Michael R. Allen

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Blairmont Goes to the Mall

by Michael R. Allen

The two-and-a-half-story, side-gabled house at 1416 Montgomery Street is Old North St. Louis is fairly nondescript. Its front elevation probably bowed years ago, and was taken down and relayed with a harder modern brick and newer fenestration. The rebuilt front wall is boring, although the side and rear walls show the house to be a late-19th-century house that could be restored to some more appropriate appearance.

But doing that work would take imagination, patience and a faith in the neighborhood’ renewal. You see, this modest dwelling is right across the alley from the so-called 14th Street Mall, the two blocks of commercial buildings fronting a part of north 14th Street closed in 1971 to form a pedestrian mall. The mall conversion killed the vitality of the commercial district, and by the 1990s only a few stores remained open. Today, the only occupied storefronts on the mall are a hair salon and a storefront church. Every other first floor is boarded or broken in, and the upper floors of the multi-story buildings have been empty even longer.

All of this is set to change, though, as a major collaborative redevelopment project is in the works. Most of the buildings on the mall are now owned by a partnership between the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, two organizations whose work is often miraculous. Imagine what they might do with 1416 Montgomery Street if they had the chance!

All we can do now is imagine, because at a recent Sheriff’s tax sale the house and its accompanying garage sold to one of the Blairmont companies. Although their purchases in Old North have slowed, they still wanted to buy a derelict building that needs to be included in the 14th Street project.

Perhaps Blairmont can rehab the building better and faster than the partnership. Perhaps I am a dog person. Perhaps someone will rebuild the buildings cleared for the Arch. Perhaps asbestos is actually a nutrient…

Categories
Architecture

Buffalo Preservationists Offer Illustrated Dictionary, Architectural Center

by Michael R. Allen

Forget what a caryatid is? Can’t remember if a dripstone and a hoodmold are one in the same?

Well, the exhaustive Illustrated Architecture Dictionary from Buffalo, New York, will answer your questions with its exhaustive list of architectural terms. Each definition is illustrated with an example from buildings in Buffalo.

The dictionary is part of a network of websites edited by members of the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier (which runs the Buffalo Architectural Center and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County. Thanks to the dedicated folks in Buffalo, there is more information about the history of Buffalo architecture on the Internet that there is about that of almost any other American city. And visitors to the city can partake of the many exhibits, lectures and tours offered at the Architectural Center. Through their inter-related projects, Buffalo architectural historians have created an interpretive model for other mid-sized American cities.

(Thanks to Lynn Josse for sending me the link to the dictionary.)

Categories
Demolition North St. Louis

Carpenters Building Demolished

Never been to the Carpenters Building before? Well, you missed your chance, because a developer demolished the Preston Bradshaw-designed building last month.

You can take some consolation is being able to read about the building here.

Categories
Demolition JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Lost: Carpenters’ Building

The author took all of the photographs used here on June 19, 2006.

by Michael R. Allen

This summer, St. Louis lost a building designed by noted architect Preston J. Bradshaw, and no one turned out to mourn its passing. In June, wreckers began dismantling his Carpenters Building (1930) at the southwest corner of North Grand Boulevard and Cozens Avenue. By this point in time, few observers could recall the glory days of this building as the home of the Carpenters’ District Council, now located in well-known quarters on Hampton Avenue. Few historians who may have noted the building’s pedigree passed by the building in recent years, and it largely went unnoticed. (No biographical sketches of Bradshaw note the Carpenters Building.) The building’s new owners didn’t care to study its history; they wrecked the building to build another section of the ungainly strip mall that is MLK Plaza.

Yet, once upon a time when Grand Avenue was a bustling thoroughfare, trade unionism was strong and architects of Bradshaw’s ability took commissions of all sizes, the Carpenters’ Building came to stand here. The union council built the building in 1930 for the cost of $50,000, which was substantial then. The design by Bradshaw is typical of the idiosyncratic Renaissance Revival style he employed frequently in the 1920s and early 1930s for hotel, apartment and office buildings. There is an abundance of buff terra cotta ornament at the base and crown of the building, while the shaft is an unadorned plane of brick. Here, the building is two stories, so the effect of this ornament program is quite different than on taller buildings that Bradshaw designed. Rather than accentuating height, here the design accentuated the width of the primary elevations, giving the building a stately presence worthy of one of the city’s most prominent thoroughfares. The abundance of terra cotta, manufactured by the Winkle Company of St. Louis, makes the short building project a message of abundance and tradition that suited the unions of the day. As with many of Bradshaw’s designs of that period, here he masterfully balances the Renaissance Revival idiom with a modern emphasis on form.

Bradshaw (1880-1949) designed many famous local buildings, including the Chase Hotel, Paul Brown Building, Coronado Hotel and, late in his career, the modernist Ford Apartments. He came to St. Louis in 1907 after having studied architecture at Columbia University and having briefly worked for McKim, Mead and White. He became known for his prowess at designing hotel and apartment buildings, and was among the best-known St. Louis architects of the first half of the twentieth century. His works are expressions of the optimism of the growing city as well as explorations of the possibility of modern architectural forms. Many of Bradshaw’s are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and have been restored in recent years.

The Carpenters Building is not among those that will be so cherished.

Categories
Demolition Fire Midtown

Stairs to Nowhere

by Michael R. Allen

The limestone steps on August 28, 2005. Photograph by Michael R. Allen.
Grandel Square, known in the 19th century and early twentieth century as Delmar Avenue, once was one of Midtown’s populated residential streets. The Midtown area was settled as early as the 1850s, but was not subdivided with official streets until after the 1861 death of Peter Lindell, who owned much of the area. His Lindell’s Grove was subdivided by heirs and became a fashionable and somewhat bucolic retreat for wealthy and middle-class families eager to escape the polluted and overcrowded inner city.

By 1875, when Compton and Dry published Pictorial St. Louis, Midtown streets were lined with dense clusters of mansions on streets like Lindell and West Pine and stone-faced townhouses in Second Empire, Romanesque and Italianate styles on streets like Delmar, Olive and Westminster. Delmar’s residents were upper-middle-class to wealthy, building townhouses more lavish than those on neighboring streets but more restrained and smaller than the largest houses in the neighborhood. The wealthier residents used limestone to face their homes, while others used sandstone. The house at 3722 Delmar, built in 1884, was among the neighborhood’s most impressive townhouses, with an ornate Italianate style, pale limestone face and a three-story height.

The fashionable blocks of Midtown changed by 1900. Just as residential growth spread outward from downtown, so did commercial growth, Streetcar lines made it easy to live in Midtown — and to work there. Some of the older houses were purchased and demolished for new office buildings on Grand and Lindell, and the neighborhood’s character changed. Some observers saw Midtown becoming a second downtown, and the wealthiest residents began to flee further west.
A photograph from the Heritage/St. Louis architectural survey, taken around 1972, shows the house at the top of stairs. Apparently, it had recently caught fire and was in use as the “Grandel Square Hotel” in its last years.

By the 1930s, the neighborhood was scene to office buildings, hotels and the “Great White Way” of movie theaters. People crowded the streets day and night, even as the Great Depression’s arrival spelled the end of dramatic growth for the city. Houses remained, but many were converted into multi-family apartment buildings or rooming houses. The house at 3722 Grandel Square was one of the old townhouses that were carved up into a hotel. The other likely fates of the day — demolition, alteration by storefront addition — were actually worse. Even by the time of this house’s demolition, many other houses of this type in Midtown were long gone.

The house burned around 1970, and was demolished by 1975. The staircase from the sidewalk to the front door was not removed, though and remains to this day. The limestone steps have cracked and settled, making the once-elegant proposal of ascending an earthier endeavor. Those who climb the steps stand on a rugged lawn, no doubt still containing parts of the house pushed into the foundation during demolition.

Next door to the east, the Meriwether House — built by Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, a descendant of Meriwether Lewis — survives as one of the dozen or so single-family dwellings remaining in Midtown. (Around 1900, there may have been as many as 250 such buildings.) The Meriwether House, almost demolished in 1999, closely resembles the house that stood at 3722 Grandel Square, giving those who see the stairs to nowhere a good idea of where they once lead. The owners of the Merriwether House are completing a restoration and condo conversion that will brings its appearance and use full circle.



Now is again a good time for the Meriwether House. Photograph by Claire Nowak-Boyd (August 28, 2005).

The stairs next door, also owned by the Meriwether House’s owners, aren’t as likely to return to their former life. They may remain tentatively in place, but no more shall they lead to a Gilded Age manor. However, perhaps the stairs will bring awareness to newcomers that the Merriwether House is no singularity, and that Midtown once was something far from the sun-baked plain of asphalt and grass that it has become.
Categories
North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

Our Dirt

by Michael R. Allen

What is shown in this photograph? Does someone in Old North St. Louis own an incontinent elephant? Are Mississippians returning? Is this a previously-unknown north side mountain?

The answer is mundane: It’s a pile of fill dirt in our yard that will be used to level out sinking foundation cavities from buildings that once stood on the lots next to our house. Once leveled, the lots can become a staging area for our mason as he begins the masonry work needed on our house.

The dirt is completing a cycle: it comes from the excavation of a foundation for a new house in Old North St. Louis on North Market Street.

Categories
North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

How Not to Patch a Hole in the Wall

by Michael R. Allen

Here is a piece of a cardboard package containing a mesh drywall patch. The cardboard was mounted as a patch and covered in drywall joint compound…

…right here, on a wall in the former first floor kitchen at the rear of our house. A fire damaged the first floor in 2003, and the owners made repairs. Many of the repairs are rather shoddy, as you can see. Here, it seems that they removed the old outlet box by making a big hole in the wall. After installing a new outlet box, rather than make proper repairs to the drywall, they hastily patched the mess with this curious method. (The new wiring, by the way, was done well.)

When recently removing tiles and sub-floor in this room, I decided to finally get rid of the bad patch. I will remove more drywall and “patch” with a properly cut piece of drywall.

Categories
Downtown Ghost Signs

Permit No Nuisance

A ghost sign emerges from a blocked-in loading dock cavity at the alley side of the former Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney warehouse building at 917 Locust Street.

Categories
Columbus Square Downtown

Neighborhood Gardens Memories

by Kathy Davis

The following comes from e-mail correspondence between the author and editor Michael Allen.

I grew up in the Neighborhood Gardens. My parents moved there in 1939. They raised three children there, including myself. We lived there until 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I have so many memories as I lived there the first eighteen years of my life. As a child I loved the pool and the courtyards. The south courtyard was where we played softball and football and the north courtyard was a basketball court. It also had great sidewalks for rollerskating.

The smell of honeysuckle was strong in the summer as there were a number of bushes throughout the complex. I was always told that there was almost every plant that was native to our state planted there. It was truly beautiful and well kept by the workmen. I remember three men who were maintenance. I went to school at St. Patrick’s grade school. I was baptized at St. Patrick’s Church and there is a picture of my family at the ground breaking of the new school in 1953. The Church was gone in 1969 or 70.

There was a Tom-Boy store on seventh street where we shopped and my brother worked as a bagger. There were also a cleaners, a tavern and an ice cream/confectionery. There were a few famous people who lived for a time at the apartments. William Inge was one.

I have many, many memories. There was nothing or nowhere prettier than there after a snowfall. There were so many trees that it was a wonderland.

I don’t remember it as a complex for low income. It was mostly single people or couples who worked downtown. Teachers and lawyers and women who worked for the phone company.Writers and artists also lived there. There were only about six kids by the time I came along. But we sure had fun.

This was a thriving neighborhood — very Italian, Catholic and strong. We used to have processions from St. Patrick’s to St. Joseph’s on Mayday. Seventh street had many markets like Tocco brothers, Valenti market where you could buy bags of olives and pumpkin seeds and just about everything. After Cochran was built there were many big families who moved in. I would go to sleep at night listening to groups of people singing across the street, as I lived at 1212 North 8th street.

We lived in a two bedroom on the first floor. No air, just window fans that my mother was very good at positioning so you got max air flow. The kitchens were small but efficient. The basements connected to other entrances and everyone would come down when it stormed. It could turn into quite the party for all the mothers with children. We all had our own locker areas to hang up laundry to dry.

Kids that went to St. Patrick’s grade school were very involved with St. Pat’s day. We performed for many priest in the area and we were the original Irish dance troop in the city. Our Troop leader was Connie O’Sullivan. He was quite the leader. Still to this day it’s like a national holiday to me.

Back to the apartments: We had a wading pool that had metal pipes at each end that made a fountain when turned on and we all swam many hots days away. Also there were two big sand boxes on each side of the pool with benches everywhere to sit and enjoy the tranquility of the courtyards. There were brick walls we would climb with statues on top. There were rails running around the grass areas we would walk on and see how far we could go before falling off. (They were two feet off the ground).

I would make out like a bandit on Halloween because there were not many kids that lived in the gardens — so I got spoiled.

My father was an iron worker and my mother a housewife. My sister and brother also graduated from St. Patrick’s and my brother was also married there.

I truly hope the renovations keep the spirit alive. To me it was home, to my family it was our little haven in the midst of a busy downtown district. You could walk downtown and shop and go to the show. You would walk and look at the Christmas displays in the windows of Famous-Barr and Scruggs, and Stix, Baer and Fuller (later Dillard’s). We watched the Arch being built — now that was something. We would skip church and walk downtown and hide out at Katz’ drugstore to get fries and a cherry coke. We would go to the Loew’s State theater on a Sunday. And watch every parade that went down Washington avenue.

Thank you for giving me a reason to reflect. I have truly enjoyed telling someone who holds an interest. It’s history and it’s my family’s life.

Categories
Severe Weather

The Heat Wave of July 1966

by Michael R. Allen

While I am inclined to believe that recent weather in St. Louis is related to global warming, I also take small comfort in the fact that it is nothing new for St. Louis. In fact, things were a lot worse forty years ago during the heat wave of 1966. In July, a three-week heat wave started that claimed 69 lives and saw frequent power outages. On July 14, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported that the day was the fifth consecutive day of over-100-degree temperatures, a state terrifying to a region where 200,000 had not had electricity in two days. On July 11, when air conditioners were tapping out available electricity in the area, Union Electric Company (now AmerenUE) started selectively choosing areas for two-hour black-outs to avert a general blackout. The next day, though, a general outage began that took several days to reverse and cost lives.

Thousands of people slept in the city’s parks for weeks on end, and many businesses were effectively shut down. Even then, the news reported that some families who sought air conditioning in their cars were thwarted because their cars were parked inside of garages that could only be opened with electric openers.

At an August meeting on the Missouri Public Service Commission that investigated the utility company’s performance during the heat wave, Union Electric President Charles Dougherty admitted that the power crisis was caused by the inability to complete the new Portage Des Sioux power plant before the summer. Dougherty blamed the contractors who were building the plant for the delay in completion.