This is the ninth and final part of a series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.
The concept rendering for Citygarden.
The 2007 Gateway Mall master plan provided impetus to the development of the two blocks of the mall between Eighth and Tenth streets as the successful Citygarden. Designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz architects and completed in 2009, Citygarden is an interactive sculpture garden that has garnered favorable criticism from the New York Times. Citygarden’s two blocks share the “hallway,†a wide formal tree-lined sidewalk along Market Street recommended by the new Gateway Mall Master Plan. However, the blocks eschew further strict formalism. Linear paths follow the somewhat irregular lines of long-abandoned alleys, while a gentle arc runs through both blocks. The north sides are raised up, with the eastern block containing a waterfall and minimalist cafe building on its high side and the western block rising up to a whimsical forested hill atop which is placed a sculpture. There is a plaza on the western block alive with fountain jets adjacent to a grid of large metal pedals upon one which one can jump to trigger bells at different tones. All of the sculptures can be touched. Citygarden has been so successful that the section of 10th Street between the two blocks remains closed to shield the heavy pedestrian traffic.
The pre-construction plan for Citygarden.
Citygarden’s design discarded rationalist notions of open space and view in favor of a contemporary landscape design theories of the need for activation, asymmetry, whimsy and native plantings. The small size of the intervention — two blocks — creates clear boundaries and edges of Citygarden that drive pedestrians into its space. The success of Citygarden in part comes from employing long-standing observations about the utility of basic urban design features that encourage circulation and building density.
This is the eighth part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.
A flier announcing a 2007 event for the master plan process.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Planning and Urban Design Director Rollin Stanley announced in 2007 their intention to create a Gateway Mall Master Plan in association with landscape architect Thomas Balsley. Their plan would be the first comprehensive plan for every block that had become part of the mall, as well as the rest of Memorial Plaza. Recognizing the design failure of the Gateway Mall, Stanley envisioned a break from the past — a mall friendly to pedestrians and built around uses that attract people. Stanley and Slay went farther than most actors in this drama and admitted that the Mall needed real planning. They didn’t want to extend it or glorify it but improve it.
The eastern mall blocks in 2007. (Source: nextSTL, nextstl.com)
Unfortunately, their plan was too constrained by the old rationalist vision to be a blueprint for major improvement. For one thing, they were committed to preserving every block of the Mall as green space — a questionable proposition in a downtown with as much open space as ours. For another, their plan avoided recommendations for improving the mall’s context. The large-scaled environment around the Mall is as resistant to human action as the park itself; it’s a chicken and egg relationship and the new Master Plan acted like an ostrich.
The master plan's envisioned terminus on the western block.
Still, there were good ideas in it. The plan avoided trying to visually unify the mall, except for a southern bike lane and promenade. The plan acknowledged the variation in block width and the curving streets that make symmetry impossible. Instead, the mall plan recommends creating different zones on the mall — a sculpture garden between Eighth and Tenth; recreation areas and a dog park west of Fifteenth street; an amphitheater-style space on Memorial Plaza; a gathering space in Kiener Plaza.
The master plan's imagined aerial view of the revised Gateway Mall landscape.
The plan tried to match these zones to adjacent uses without looking at the physical connections between. For instance, the sculpture garden introduced a rather romantic vision of human-scaled green space near downtown residences and offices. But it’s flanked to the north and south by large, monolithic office buildings set back from the sidewalk and possessing reflective windows and intrusive driveways. A walk from the north side of downtown to the sculpture garden won’t provide much delight or instruction if it passes by the bizarre sidewalk configuration on the west or east sides of the AT&T tower, for instance.
The master plan recommended more seating, a walking and running path, kinetic art on adjacent buildings, and lighting on the blocks that would make them attractive night time spaces. There was some break-down of barriers with a small restaurant building in the sculpture garden. But in some ways the restaurant and the dazzling contemporary art are low-key, updated versions of the monuments and buildings of the 1919 Public Building Group Plan.
Memorial Plaza as "The Civic Room" in the master plan. View is toward the northwest.
At the Gateway Mall press conference in 2008, Mayor Slay declared a “new era” for the Gateway Mall. This era was new inasmuch as it is based on planners’ admission of the mall’s failure. However, the failure has always been systematic and structural, while the solutions outlined in the new Master Plan were topical and aesthetic. Rather than address crucial problems of identity, circulation and boundaries, the new Master Plan treated those as secondary causes by offering a remedy not to the idea of a Gateway Mall but to its execution.
This is the seventh part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.
Real Estate Row. The view northward from Market Street along Seventh Street from bottom to top includes the Buder, Title Guaranty, Wainright, DeMenil and Holland buildings. Only the Wainwright remaims. (Source: Scan from Rob Powers, builtstlouis.net.)
At the end of the 1970s, after failing to build the winning design from the 1967 design competition, city leaders did not let the dream of a “completed” Gateway Mall die. There still were blocks of old buildings to clear and new corporate high-rises to attract. However, developer Donn Lipton seized the opportunity of city inaction and in February 1977 submitted a redevelopment plan for the blocks between Seventh and Tenth streets radically different than the Sasaki plan.
Rendering of the Lipton plan looking east from just past Eighth Street. (Source: Landmraks Association of St. Louis.)
Nearly every day I pass by this lonely two-story frame house at the northwest corner of North Florissant and Newhouse avenues in Hyde Park. While this stretch of North Florissant has its gaps, the east side is a nearly-continuous line of flats, houses and storefronts. Pietkutowski’s is not far. Yet this house stands alone at the intersection. Original weatherboard siding peaks out from failing rolled asphalt siding that mocks red brick (note the faux keystones on the front elevation!). Above, the slates on the mansard roof are in place, shedding water as they should. The side entrance is covered by a Craftsman-influenced open hood, a later addition marking stylistic changes since the nineteenth century when the house was built. Many frame houses in Hyde Park have been lost, and few have the solid and straight lines of this one. Yet I suspect one day my travels will take me past its grave-site, mud marked by bulldozer tracks.
On Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article by reporter Tim Logan that raised the issue of the city’s lack of citywide demolition review. The article, which ran on the front page above the fold, took as a starting point the sudden, lonesome death of the Avalon Theater on South Kingshighway. Since the Avalon was outside of one of the city’s preservation review districts, it bit the dust — or, rather, became dust bitten by passers-by — without any review.
Multi-family buildings in the 5000 block of Winona Avenue, in the Southampton neighborhood.
Logan’s article included a promising set of quotes from two aldermen. The first came from Carol Howard (D-14th), who represents the eastern part of the Southampton neighborhood where the Avalon was located. The demolition experience has spurred Howard to seek demolition review for her ward, one of south city’s only wards that lacks review. Howard also endorses a return to citywide review, which St. Louis had before 1999. “It’s a tool, I think, that makes for better decisions,” she told Logan.
A view that could be read as dissenting came from Alderman Antonio French (D-21st), whose constituents include this writer. French’s first bill upon being elected in 2009 put the 21st Ward into preservation review for the first time since 1999. Yet the alderman wants to remove review for part of the College Hill neighborhood added to his ward in redistricting. French wants to concentrate preservation efforts on the intact largely Penrose and O’Fallon neighborhoods in his ward. “What works for Penrose and O’Fallon may not work for College Hill,” said the alderman.
The building at 1431 Prairie Avenue in College Hill is one of the last buildings left on its block.
Am I the only person who sees that both Alderwoman Howard and Alderman French are right? St. Louis does need citywide review, and building conservation strategies for depleted neighborhoods like College Hill — where many blocks are devoid of more than five or six historic buildings — need not entail preserving every remaining historic building.
Yet the crux of these two points’ convergence is that these decisions need to be made by qualified professional planners working in the interest of all city residents. Aldermen who serve geographic areas whose boundaries change every ten years, who lack training in urban planning and historic preservation, and who have to seek re-election are not the best people to make decisions for the long-term interests of the city’s built environment. Yet aldermen create the legislation under which review takes place, establishing guidelines that represent the public interest.
Alderman French might be suggesting that a citywide demolition review ordinance be informed by theories of planned shrinkage. Again, having professionals examining demolition seems like the best way to make that happen. Citywide review does not mean preservation of everything in the city, it means a system in which preservation planning is made under legal criteria interpreted by professionals who are free from political motivations. Applicants for demolition, aldermen, neighbors and preservationists will have a predictable public process with the same rule for every building.
If that sounds familiar, it’s what this city had before the Board of Aldermen passed the current preservation ordinance in 1999.
The Castle Ballroom stands at the northeast corner of Olive and T.E. Huntley streets.
A lot of what you need to know about the Castle Ballroom can be read on its exterior. The commercial first floor of the building indicates its historic place on a busy streetcar line. Graceful double-height arched windows above the first story reveal a ballroom which extends almost from the street to the alley. The lively Renaissance Revival brickwork indicates the aspirations of the owners in 1908 — this is a proper dance academy, not a warehouse. Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence isn’t part of the building itself, but in the enormous expanse of lawn across the street. The Castle Ballroom had epitomized early 20th century elegance, but half a century later it was only spared from the nation’s largest urban renewal slum clearance project by virtue of being on the north side of Olive rather than the south side. Put all of these pieces together, and you’ve got the story.
In just over four decades of operation, the Castle Ballroom witnessed and responded to wave after wave of changing taste in music and dance. Herman Albers and Cornelius Ahern constructed the building in 1908. Architect J.D. Paulus designed the building. They had previously operated the dance academy at Cave Hall, the above-ground entertainment center associated with Uhrig’s Cave at the southwest corner of Jefferson and Washington. When the old Cave Hall was demolished to make way for the Coliseum, they took the name with them.
Derivative of cave Dancing Academy postcard, c. 1910.
Mr. and Mrs. Albers and Mr. and Mrs. Ahern themselves supervised the dancing at the new hall, and the Uhrig’s Cave Orchestra followed them to the new location. By this time, traditional tastes in music were giving way to a new sensation — ragtime. The syncopated rhythms of the ragtime music invited a daringly different style of dancing. Scandalous new “animal dances” (the Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, and Grizzly Bear, among others) were popularized at the highest levels of society. In 1911, Chief of Police William Young instituted a Morality Squad to inspect public dance halls and stop the vulgar new dances wherever they occurred. Newspapers gleefully covered the controversy, their condemnations illustrated with titillating line drawings of couples in unseemly poses. Alexander DeMenil, always a spokesman for Victorian values in the Edwardian age, wrote that the dances were a symptom of society’s decadence. “We do today openly and publicly what we would have been ashamed to do in secret ten years ago,” he wrote in 1913. “Far from being ‘new,’ these dances are a revision of the grossest practices of savage men.”
Souvenir image from the Cave Dancing Academy.Interviewed in 1929, Herman Albers indicated that Cave Hall had always remained a place of the utmost propriety. There is no evidence to contradict him. The owners never offered comment in the press wars over the new dances. Their Central West End colleagues Jacob Mahler and Alice Martin, both still remembered in St. Louis dance history, were the most frequently quoted. When the Post-Dispatch accompanied the Morality Squad officers on a night’s rounds near the end of 1911, they made it all the way to Cave Hall only to remember it was closed on Mondays. (The article, dated December 12, 1911, boasts one of the most memorable headlines of all time: “Morality Squad, Seeking Revelry, Fails to Find It.”)
If the moralists thought the ragtime dances were bad, what came next was much, much worse. Jazz music invited even more jumping and gyration. Instructors of traditional ballroom dance banded together in self-defense, encouraging additional legislation to eradicate dances such as the “Camel Walk.” The new ordinance was designed to “reach the irresponsible dancing teachers who, because of the money there is in it, will teach any kind of wiggle.”
After his partner’s death, Albers changed the name of the venue to Castle Ballroom. In doing so, he embraced a more modern image for the academy. Vernon and Irene Castle had been the greatest names in dancing until Vernon’s death in a training accident during World War I. The Castles earned their success by taking modern dances and making them completely respectable. Today, the name “Castle” may sound like a reference to the building, but in 1922 the allusion to the famous dancers could not have been missed.
The dawn of the Jazz Age spelled the end of the great ballroom dancing academies of St. Louis. As early as 1922, dance instructor Alice Martin claimed to have “practically given up teaching ballroom dancing†because of the “vulgar extremes of these times….” By 1930, most teachers of ballroom dancing had stopped advertising. The Castle’s newspaper advertisements increasingly emphasized the hall’s availability for rental.
Impressive corbelling on the Olive Street elevation of the Castle Ballroom.
In 1934, Herman Albers closed the Castle and filed for personal bankruptcy. The end of Prohibition had played a role, his attorney noted, since people now danced at cafes where liquor was sold. He also blamed the widening of Olive Street and a change in streetcar stops. His comments to the Globe-Democrat overlook an obvious demographic shift in the neighborhood.
In the second and third decades of the 20th century, the immediate neighborhood of the Castle Ballroom, especially the blocks just south, had transitioned from an almost completely Caucasian neighborhood to one that was dominated by African American institutions. The fabled Mill Creek Valley neighborhood developed the city’s greatest concentration and number of black residents. When the Castle re-opened in 1935, it was advertised as “THE MILLION DOLLAR DANCE PALACE – Exclusively for the Best Colored People of St. Louis.” The hall again held dances on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday nights, but they were advertised to a different clientele.
Advertisement that appeared in the St. Louis Argus on October 25, 1935.
Manager Jesse Johnson was frequently touted in The St. Louis Argus as the city’s top black promoter. A favorite house band was Eddie Randle’s St. Louis Blue Devils. According to one account, it was at the Castle Ballroom that the teenaged Miles Davis first auditioned for the band. With Eddie Randle (playing regularly at the Castle as well as other venues around town), the young prodigy received his first experience playing in a professional band. By the end of the 1930s, Johnson brought in more national acts, including Duke Ellington. Under other management, the entertainment included Fletcher Henderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Domino, and Count Basie. Through the 1940s, the Castle featured local and national touring acts and hosted many private events for black organizations.
The early 1950s brought the Mocambo Club (named for a famous Los Angeles hot spot) This club lasted barely a month before a dispute at the bar turned into a sensational shootout which claimed the life of the owner and a local underworld figure. The Globe-Democrat reported that there were thirty people present but only one witness. When the club reopened under new management, it was still able to attract national favorites such as Louis Armstrong and the Ink Spots, both in 1952.
The final days of the Castle Ballroom coincided with a civic effort toward slum clearance. Mill Creek Valley at this time retained the deteriorated housing stock of the 19th century, densely packed with African Americans who were allowed few other living options. The neighborhood had a high crime rate, high infant mortality rate, and low indoor plumbing rate. One planning document described the neighborhood as “100 blocks of hopeless, rat-infested, residential slums.”
A bond issue for clearance and redevelopment failed in 1948. Amendments to federal law in 1954 allowed the Mill Creek Valley to become an urban renewal project, and voters approved matching local funding in 1955. Original plans called for 4,200 families to be relocated from a 107-block area. Roughly 2100 buildings plus accessory structures were to be demolished.
Heritage House under construction in Mill Creek Valley, 1965. Olive Street is at the bottom of the frame, with the Castle Ballroom just outside of the shot to the right. (Globe-Democrat Collection.)
The northern boundary of the clearance area was Olive Street. Beginning in 1959, nearly every home, church, and business in Mill Creek was demolished. Thriving commercial districts, significant institutional buildings (including the Pine Street YMCA) and untold homes were knocked to rubble and sent to the landfill. The vast majority of Mill Creek residents were not resettled in the new housing that was built across from the Castle.
The ballroom as it appears today.
Today, the Castle Ballroom is one of the last buildings in the area to retain a strong association with the African American community that once surrounded it. The second story ballroom has not seen dancing since the 1950s, but now it has another chance. The building is on the market and substantial historic tax credits are available for its restoration. Several potential buyers have come forward, but none have committed yet. (If you’re interested in purchasing the building, visit the realtor’s web site at www.leighmaibes.com.) Public interest is also increasing, with recent appearances on music history tours by Michael Allen and Kevin Belford. Landmarks Association’s hard hat tour this past Saturday sold out, and a second tour is scheduled for February 4 (details here).
Our full nomination of the Castle Ballroom is on the State Historic Preservation Office web site here.
One day after my call for an imaginative path away from demolition of the Avalon Theater, wreckers started destroying the south city landmark. This morning, after considering it since December 22, the Building Division approved the demolition permit. Down came theater walls and steel trusses, headed up to North Broadway scrap yards.
If the Avalon had been protected under the city’s preservation ordinance, the demolition permit would have required the additional approval of the city’s Cultural Resources Office. Failure to get that approval would have caused a denial of the application.
Unfortunately, the 14th Ward is not in preservation review, and the Avalon had no local or national landmark status that would have led to review under the preservation ordinance. Yet the Avalon was eligible for National Register of Historic Places listing, on its own or as a contributing resource to larger districts.
Is the Avalon Theater poised to be revitalized as a two-screen neighborhood cinema, a concert venue or a cafe with three-seasons dining in a re-purposed auditorium? Unless the owners drop a pending application for demolition, the answer is “we will never find out.”
Avalon rendering by Jesiey Mead.
On December 22, owner Greg Tsevis applied for a demolition permit for the shuttered Art Deco movie house. So far, the Building Division has not approved the application (#495332). Yet there is nothing standing in the way of approval — the Avalon lacks any protection from demolition under the city’s preservation ordinance. The Avalon Theater is not a City Landmark, is not listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is not located in one of the 20 city wards that have preservation review. The 14th Ward, where the Avalon is located, is one of only two south side wards without demolition review. (Alderman Stephen Gregali kept the 14th Ward out of preservation review and his successor, Carol Howard, has not placed the ward under review.)
Demolition seems a hasty move given that the Avalon has only been listed on the market since August at $250,000, after having sat for years with an unrealistic asking price of over $900,000. Since the price dropped to a reasonable amount, several parties have tried to assemble rehabilitation plans for the Avalon. Yet all would-be buyers need historic tax credits to make the costs of rehabilitation work, and the building needs to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places first. The process of listing can take up to six months. No one will close on purchase without securing rehabilitation financing.
This is the sixth part of a nine-part series on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, that ribbon of park space that runs between Market and Chestnut streets and from the Jefferson National Expansion memorial westward to Twenty-Second Street downtown. This article began its life as a lecture that I delivered to the Friends of Tower Grove Park on February 3, 2008, and was published in its entirety in the NewsLetter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Missouri Valley chapter in Spring 2011.
In March 1966, an undeterred Mayor Alphonso Cervantes traveled to New York City for the public announcement of a national design competition with a $15,000 prize for a master design for the entire Gateway Mall. The city and Downtown St. Louis, Inc. sponsored the design competition. Fifty-seven firms or individuals submitted designs before the winner was announced in June 1967.
View toward the Old Courthouse from Seventh and Chestnut, in 1968, showing the future site of the Morton D. May Ampitheater. (Preservation Research Office Collection.)
The boundary of the competition was set with the Old Courthouse at the east and the proposed North-South Distributor (roughly Twenty-Second Street) at the west. the competition was the first attempt at a master plan for a landscape that was merely six years old in the minds of planners. By this time, downtown had lost so much building stock and street life that the old rationalist rhetoric about alleviating the ills of the central city would have been ludicrous. Instead, Cervantes and civic leaders began to talk up the effect of the Gateway Mall as an instrument that might lead to building up the core. With the Mall extended, they argued, Chestnut and Market streets would become desirable sites for the sorts of large corporate headquarters St. Louis desperately wanted to attract. The rhetorical emphasis shifted from social to economic benefits, but the rationalist framework remained latent.
One of Sasaki, Dawson & DeMay's dramatic renderings of the Gateway Mall concept published in Architectural Forum.
