Author: Michael R. Allen

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North St. Louis O'Fallon

Interning on the O’Fallon Neighborhood Survey

by Christian Frommelt

My spring 2011 internship with the Preservation Research Office has allowed me to integrate academic interest with the simple desire to become a more dedicated member of the St. Louis community. Engaging with the type of work practiced by the PRO’s architectural historians has given me a rewarding experience not only in architectural history, but also in the deeper significance of historic preservation for the St. Louis community.

Christian Frommelt talks with O'Fallon residents on Turner Avenue.

Since February 2011 I have primarily worked on building permit research, architectural photography, and building descriptions for the P.R.O.’s large-scale architectural survey of the O’Fallon neighborhood. As a result of this survey project the neighborhood will be recognized by the National Register as a Historic Place by this time next year. My latest contribution to the O’Fallon survey project involved collecting oral histories provided by North St. Louis residents, an aspect of the project that unified a study of the built environment, a deeper understanding of social issues such as demographic shifts in St. Louis, and one woman’s personal experience at the forefront of a transitioning neighborhood in North St. Louis.

Mabel Jones, an enthusiastic citizen of the Penrose neighborhood, was the first to participate in an interview. She outlined her decision to move at age twenty from Whiteville, Tennessee to St. Louis, where she began working in a laundromat and later on the Near North Riverfront’s Produce Row. As she described her marriage and the upbringing of her five children, Mabel highlighted her ability to gradually move from cramped kitchenette apartments west of Downtown St. Louis during the late 1940s and early 1950s, to a new Pruitt and Igoe housing project in 1957, and, a year later, to the type of family home she had always admired in the Penrose neighborhood. Mabel detailed the make-up of her block as it quickly transitioned from a primarily white to primarily black block, and recounted the struggles, and also the pride, associated with being the first black family on a block of respectable single-family houses.

While I am thankful for having gained the ability to identify hipped dormers, quoins, and belvederes, my interactions with PRO staff, residents we met on O’Fallon streets, and community-minded enthusiasts like Mabel Jones, are what transcended the trudge of busy work which so explicitly marks many undergraduate internship experiences. My relationship with other people in St. Louis is what brought out-of-book research to life. As I have learned, the success of local preservationists and architectural historians lies not solely in a knowledge of and passion for St. Louis’ built environment, but also a steadfast recognition of the humanness in preserving our cityscapes. The fabric of the city does not consist merely of the architecture we admire from a distance, but of the people who inhabit St. Louis’ buildings, businesses, parks, and streets we all too frequently bypass.

Christian Frommelt was one of PRO’s interns from January through May 2011. He is the author of the blog Mound City Stomp.

Categories
Events South St. Louis Tower Grove East

Rehabbers Tour of Tower Grove East Tomorrow

Please come on this Saturday’s Rehabbers Club tour as we visit two Works in Progress buildings in the Tower Grove East neighborhood.

9:30 a.m.: Tour site #1: 3434 Humphrey St. 63118

Patty Maher is the owner/developer of this all brick home that is for sale for $240,000. She is almost done rehabbing the building and has used green rehabbing techniques and state historic tax credits. The building recently won DeSales Community Housing Corporation’s “Gold Brick Award” in recognition of high quality work happening here.

This spacious home will have four bedrooms, three full bathrooms and an office. Universal design techniques have been applied on the first floor which includes a bathroom and bedroom. Come learn about the work the Patty has done to modernize this beautiful building.

10:30 a.m.: Tour site #2: 2945 Michigan Ave. 63118

David Woodruff and his fiancé Tiffany Ellis purchased their home in May 2009 with the help of a 203K rehabbers loan and realtor Jim Willen.

David searched the city for almost two years to find a property that was roomy, in an emerging neighborhood and what he calls a “livable rehab”. Now, after fourteen months of living in the attic, three general contractors and lots of paint chips, David and Tiffany are still at it, behind pace, but on budget.

The home was built in 1892 as a multi-family residence. David and Tiffany moved stairways and doorways to combine the apartments into a single family home.

David and Tiffany have done their best to re-use and repurpose as much of the home as possible. They’ve drastically improved its energy efficiency by replacing all 22 windows, adding a tankless hot water heater, converting to natural gas, updating the electrical and water lines and will soon add a white painted roof.

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Hyde Park North St. Louis

(en)visioning Hyde Park

Our friend and collaborator Andrew Raimist is leading the effort to raise funds for a very worthy summer arts program taking place in the fragile but beautiful Hyde Park neighborhood. In (en)visioning Hyde Park, students in 5th through 8th grade will be working to improve their Hyde Park neighborhood and documenting the progress using photography. Students will learn the basics of digital photography from image capture through editing, printing and publishing.

This effort will be lead by teaching artist Raimist with the generous support of other photographers, artists and educators. ReBuild Foundation is the major sponsor of this workshop as part of their Urban Expressions outreach mission.

This program takes place in collaboration with artist Theaster Gates’ CityStudioSTL’s rehabilitation of a vacant Hyde Park home to create a community gathering place.

A full-color book of the students’ photographs, drawings and writings will be professionally published. Each student will get their own copy to have in hand when school begins in the fall. This experience will enhance their educational achievement and self-confidence.

Grassroots support for this program will provide immeasurable benefits to the students, their families and their neighborhood. Your backing demonstrates widespread commitment to the underserved children of North St. Louis.

Learn more here.

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Events

Public Housing in St. Louis: Vanishing Mid-Century Modern Architecture

Thursday, June 23 at 7:00 p.m.
St. Louis Artists’ Guild, 2 Oak Knoll Park
Free
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Modern STL again joins the Architecture Section of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild to present a program on mid-century modern design.

Cochran Gardens, designed by Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber and completed in 1953.

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Architectural historians Michael Allen and Lynn Josse, both of Preservation Research Office, will provide an overview of the history and design of public housing in St. Louis city, from low-rise Carr Square Village in 1941 through the high-rise Arthur Blumeyer Homes in 1968. The talk will cover the contributions to local public housing architecture by major designers like Minoru Yamasaki, Gyo Obata, Joseph Murphy and others. With St. Louis’ two public towers both slated for demolition in the next two years, the talk will devote special attention to the development of high-rise housing forms and features at the Cochran Gardens and Pruitt-Igoe projects. Remaining public housing buildings at Carr Square and Clinton-Peabody have been heavily altered, meaning that the last intact buildings soon will fade to memory.

Categories
Carondelet Fire Parks

Building a New Bandstand

by Michael R. Allen

The Soulard Blues Band plays on the bandstand, summer 2010. Photograph by Tom Lampe.

Unfortunately, wood is both a common architectural material and highly combustible. These traits were apparent Wednesday when the beloved Carondelet Park bandstand, which was built after 1916, was destroyed by fire. All that remains of the bandstand are the concrete piers, ash and charred pieces of the historic structure. The bandstand was totally lost. Or was it?

The Parks Department is proposing that the structure quickly be replaced by a “fire resistant”” version of what was lost. The phrase “metal and fiberglass that looks like Victorian-style structures” even appeared in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article this week, followed by the notion that other wooden structures in Carondelet Park be coated with fire-proofing.

Certainly, the way forward is a dual look at the past and the future, but the Parks Department is looking the wrong ways. For starters, the lost bandstand built in St. Louis’ fruitful City Beautiful period and fifteen years after Queen Victoria’s death is far from a “Victorian” structure. The bandstand was an elegant, purposeful and picturesque structure set deliberately into Carondelet Park’s romantic landscape. The landscape was developed starting in 1876 following principles of landscape architecture that were indeed Victorian, but the bandstand came in the era of City Beautiful park planning and was a monument to St. Louis’ early 20th century development of public amenities and park improvements following the publication of our first Comprehensive Plan in 1907.

Thus the bandstand married the ideals of its time with those of earlier era. That is exactly what its replacement should do. A good architect will be able to join the setting in Carondelet Park with the needs of a 21st century bandstand as well as the aspirations of St. Louis today. The Parks Department should be looking for that good architect instead of rushing to build a replacement structure that would be hasty and anachronistic. Few people’s depiction of the modern character of this city would include the words “fiberglass” or “Victorian.”

As for fire-proofing other wooden structures, that is a troubling proposal. Coated wood may not burn easily, but it will trap moisture that will lack a way out. The parks department might find that flash fires are not as expensive or common a problem as slow rot of wooden structures coated with inappropriate and impermeable materials. After all, the Carondelet Park bandstand – may it rest in peace – stood strong for over 90 years.

This post appeared yesterday on MayorSlay.com.

Categories
Events

Our Architecture at Large Scale: American City Opens Tomorrow

Starting tomorrow, St. Louisans have the chance to view large-format versions of the dazzling and poignant images of American City: St. Louis Architecture: Three Centuries of Classic Design. Written by Robert Sharoff and photographed by Bill Zbaren, the volume is the first lushly illustrated monograph on St. Louis architecture since….well, ever. One has to reach back to John Albury Bryan’s masterful Missouri’s Contribution to American Architecture (1928) to find a volume connected to St. Louis’ built past close to the scope, reverence and beauty of this one.

We will review the volume and the exhibition shortly, but meantime wish to extend the invitation to the exhibition at the Missouri Botanical Garden opening tomorrow evening. Details follow. While the book’s format offers many page-size images, the photographs in the exhibition will be lavishly scaled. Don’t miss the opportunity!

Categories
North St. Louis Pruitt Igoe St. Louis Place

Coming Soon

by Michael R. Allen

Coming Soon.

Coming Soon. So proclaims this small plastic sign, affixed by screws and washers to the front wall of a north St. Louis building.  There’s a dumpster out back, so the sign definitely is telling it straight.

The house at 2417 Cass Avenue.

The building is a sturdy two-family with a lovely pressed-metal cornice. What makes the rehab so remarkable is the building’s location. This building stands at 2417 Cass Avenue, across the street from the untamed site of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project. There are only three buildings left on this block face, spaced out considerably. This block is one of ten that the city tried to clear completely in the late 1980s as part of the failed Commerce Business Park plan. Much of this pocket of St. Louis Place was removed, leaving just a handful of buildings and so much vacant land the area has been dubbed the “urban prairie.”

Amid these challenges, owner Grace Baptist Church, which occupies another building on the block face, is working to bring the building back to life. One of the incongruities of thinking about shrinking cities is the persistence of neighborhood economy and reuse demand in depleted neighborhoods. Where there’s a long-term store of value — a building — there may well be a will to make it into wealth. Basic market economics seem to be more enduring than cyclical urban planning interventions.

Categories
Historic Preservation Missouri

Missouri’s Most Endangered Historic Places Announced

Missouri Preservation announced its List of Most Endangered Historic Places for 2011 on Tuesday, June 7, 2011. The slate of endangered sites was unveiled at a Missouri Preservation Press Conference, held at the Oak Grove Mausoleum St. Louis County, which itself is on the 2011 List of Most Endangered Historic Places.

Hodgen School in St. Louis' Gate District neighborhood, nominated to the statewide endangered list by PRO's Michael Allen and Lindsey Derrington.

The Most Endangered Historic Places, one of Missouri Preservation’s most visible programs, calls much needed attention to threatened historic resources throughout the state. The Most Endangered Program annually highlights historic resources that are “at risk.” Each year Missouri Preservation solicits nominations from around the State, evaluates the merits of the submissions, and announces the “Most Endangered.” Throughout the year, Missouri Preservation provides technical assistance, advocacy, and planning support for the listed properties.

Missouri Preservation Board President Karen Bode Baxter, Penny Pitman, Chairperson of the Missouri Preservation’s Most Endangered Historic Places Committee and Bill Hart, Missouri Preservation’s Field Representative made the announcement.

Nine listings representing eleven buildings and structures were held over from the 2010 List, as they are still considered endangered and continue to need support to save them from deterioration or destruction. Six historic places are new to the 2011 list, including the Williams-Gierth House in Poplar Bluff, the Jefferson School in Cape Girardeau, the William P. Thompson House in the Trenton vicinity, the Delmo Community Center in Homestown, the Hodgen School Building in St. Louis City, and the Oak Grove Mausoleum and Chapel in St. Louis County. More detailed information about all endangered historic places is available here.

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Categories
East St. Louis, Illinois Motels

East St. Louis Holiday Inn

by Michael R. Allen

Scan of postcard of the East St. Louis Holiday Inn at 657 E. Broadway. Source: Collection of the Preservation Research Office.

Following up on my article “Motels in the City of St. Louis”, I briefly wanted to show the largest motel built in our neignbor to the east, East St. Louis. The Holiday Inn at 657 E. Broadway, located just east of the seven-story Broadview Hotel of 1927, was built in the late 1960s. The motel’s amenities included a swimming pool and restaurant with cocktail lounge, in addition to close proximity to the cluster of interstates 55, 64 and 70 around downtown East St. Louis.  This modern motel was built amid Model Cities-funded redevelopment of the central city.  The large-scale building removal that was part of East St. Louis’ redevelopment efforts is evident in the above postcard view’s capture of large swaths of verdant green grass.

The remaining section of the Holiday Inn today.

The Holiday Inn’s two-story, U-shaped mass of hotel rooms stood until a decade ago. By then, the motel’s last owner had closed up shop, and the place was an abandoned curiosity. However, the one-story, brick-faced and largely windowless restaurant building remains standing and in use as a banquet center.  The trademark Holiday Inn sign’s twisted trapezoid replacement is as memorable as its predecessor.

Categories
Central West End Downtown Mid-Century Modern Midtown Motels North St. Louis South St. Louis

Motels in the City of St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

A version of this article first appeared in the Winter 2009 NewsLetter of the St. Louis Chapter of the Society Architectural Historians.

There is ample recognition of the significance of mid-century motels along roadsides across America, where motels used colorful signage and design to beckon to weary Americans enjoying their automotive freedom. Perhaps because of nostalgic idealization of the motor court and the “open road” and perhaps because of the stigma that postwar urban renewal efforts have attained, local history overlooks the significant wave of urban motel construction that took place in St. Louis between 1958 and 1970.

Advertisement for the Bel Air Motel. Note that the front wing does not yet have the third story addition.

The 1958 opening of the Bel Air Motel on Lindell Boulevard renewed the building of lodging in the City of St. Louis while introducing a hotel form new to the city, the motel. St. Louis’ last new hotel before that was the nearby Park Plaza Hotel (1930), a soaring, elegant Art Deco tower built on the cusp of the Great Depression. However, another hotel built before the Depression was more indicative of future trends than the Park Plaza. In 1928, Texas developer and automobile travel enthusiast Percy Tyrell opened the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 205 N. 18th Street in downtown St. Louis (listed in the National Register on February 7, 2007), designed by Kansas City architect Alonzo Gentry. While the 14-story Renaissance Revival hotel was stylistically similar to contemporary hotels, it introduced the chain economy hotel to St. Louis.

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