Author: Michael R. Allen

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LRA North St. Louis St. Louis Place

Picnic on an LRA Lot

by Michael R. Allen

This Monday, the Chautauqua Art Lab started its second day with a Public Reclamation Picnic organized by Kara Clark Holland, who has a series of these events. The idea is simple and amazing: transforming an underutilized space into part of the public realm through joyful activity.

Monday’s location was the vacant lot at the northwest corner of North 14th Street and Cass Avenues in St. Louis Place. The parcel is owned by the Land Reutilization Authority and adjacent to a building owned by Northside Regeneration LLC.

Perhaps LRA should consider picnic fees as a revenue stream, as with its garden lease program. In some neighborhoods, vacant lots are closer than parks and offer large grassy areas for spreading out. With permanent uses likely years out, these lots can be utilized by the community today through picnics, gardening, sports and other short-term uses.

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Events North St. Louis Pruitt Igoe

“The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” Screenings This Week

A still from "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth".

by Michael R. Allen

Make Pruitt-Igoe #1. The button’s message had an obvious irony by the time that a reporter held it to a camera in 1968. Yet as the new documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth makes clear, the fate of Pruitt-Igoe was intertwined with the fate of St. Louis. Few would have scorned a “Make St. Louis #1” button although its message in the 1960s would have been as naive as the wish for the 33 towers of Pruitt-Igoe.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth plots the rise and fall of Pruitt-Igoe against a larger context of change in St. Louis. The film is particularly poignant in making clear that for the entire life span of Pruitt-Igoe, St. Louis was shrinking rapidly. Built at a higher population density than the DeSoto-Carr neighborhood they replaced, Pruitt-Igoe’s towers were built on the notion that the city would being growing, and that it would come to grips with the poverty of its residents.

Instead, St. Louis drained thousands of people and spent the 1950s and 1960s imposing a harsh and destructive spatial segregation on the region. If Pruitt-Igoe had a chance to be #1, it was a long shot.  Besides, St. Louis itself didn’t fare much better.

This week The Pruitt-Igoe Myth screens at 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, May 11 and at noon on Saturday, May 14 at the Tivoli Theater.  Tickets are $10. The directors and former Pruitt-Igoe resident Sylvester Brown, Jr. will take questions after each screening.

Categories
Agriculture Demolition Hyde Park North St. Louis

Turnverein Site Empty For First Time Since 1870

by Michael R. Allen

The former front of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein along Salisbury Avenue.

Architectural historians often stop their work when a building reaches its sure death. Without a chance at preservation, an already-decrepit building is just a historic shell. Articles written, consulting fees paid, photos taken — what is left to do? Plenty. As a building is lost through neglect and later demolition, its body is battered until a flood of historic memory is released. Perhaps a vacant building means even more to a community during its demolition. The cleared site serves as an empty signifier — signifying many things to many people. One of those things may actually get built.

So the Nord St. Louis Turnverein’s rapid demolition last week under the capable hands of Z & L Wrecking was an instructive moment in local architectural history. The rapidity of demolition, the cleaning of brick and the removal of all complete traces of building in one week is an accomplishment unmatched in execution and intensity by the work of any architect or builder.

Looking across site toward 20th Street.

In just one week, Z & L Wrecking removed a building that had occupied the site starting in 1870. The northern half of the site had not been unbuilt for 141 years. The southern half across the alley had been the site of a building for 113 years. The rapid liquidation of so much material and civic memory was a quiet symphony of demolition, or perhaps an unrecorded dirge.

Continue reading “Turnverein Site Empty For First Time Since 1870”
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Events

Chatillon-DeMenil House Foundation’s 5th Annual Used Book Sale

1922-24 Cherokee Street
Saturday May 14, 9 am – 4 pm ($5 admission from 9 – 10)
Sunday May 15, noon – 4: bag sale!

The collection has grown so large that it will be filling not one but two storefronts on Cherokee Street’s Antique Row. Donations can be made at the Chatillon-DeMenil House Wednesday through Saturdaybetween the hours of 10 am – 2 pm. The Chatillon-DeMenil House has operated as a museum for more than 40 years, interpreting the lives of the Chatillon and DeMenil families, their extraordinary home, and their impact on local history and national developments. For more information visit www.demenil.org or call (314) 771-5828. The House is located at 3352 DeMenil Place at Chwerokee Street, just off Interstate 55.

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Events

Creating a Better Block

From Park Central Development

Come create a Better Block in the Grove! On Saturday, May 14 during the Tour de Grove races, the Mayor’s Vanguard Cabinet and the Grove CID will be hosting a Better Block event in which boarded up storefronts will be transformed into colorful vibrant storefronts, at least for the day. Come enjoy a temporary movie theater with outdoor film screenings throughout the day (including classic The Great Saint Louis Bank Robbery), a bakery/café with complimentary coffee and pastries, and an arcade with interactive games. There will also be interactive public art, including “I’m in St. Louis because…” where you can write in why you’ve chosen to stay in the City.

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Bridges Infrastructure

A Nostalgic Grand Avenue Bridge

by Michael R. Allen

Rendering of new Grand Avenue viaduct from the Board of Public Service.

The new Grand Avenue viaduct over the Mill Creek Valley will be a decent and well-built piece of infrastructure. Replacing a streamlined structure from 1959, the new viaduct skips over its mid-century predecessor to appropriate elements of the original Grand Avenue viaduct. Or does it?

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Housing Mid-Century Modern North St. Louis Pruitt Igoe

Standing By Yamasaki

by Michael R. Allen

On April 24, after a tornado struck Lambert Airport, the New York Times published the article “Struggling St. Louis Airport Takes a Shot to the Chin, but Recovers.” While many St. Louisans quibbled over the symbolic image of the city encapsulated in the adjective “struggling” (applied to only the airport), I found a less immediate semiotic matter of interest. Namely, the article was accompanied by a striking color photograph of Lambert Airport’s iconic main terminal (1956) in the background behind architect Gyo Obata, who directed the project for the firm Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber. Obata is the last living link to the firm and its renowned principal Minoru Yamasaki, and his presence in the photograph of a boarded-up, weather-beaten terminal conveys strong pride in its design and concern for its future.

In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes writes about the punctum, that part of a photograph’s meaning “that pierces the viewer.” The punctum is subjective, and may diverge from any obvious or intended symbolism in an image. In that New York Times photograph, showing the architect’s watch over a damaged part of Yamasaki’s modernist legacy, I quickly noticed my punctum, a place not represented directly in the photograph but so immediately present in my mind: Pruitt-Igoe.

Image of the Pruitt Homes under construction from the 1955 catalog of the Stephen Gorman Bricklaying Company, which was the masonry contractor for the project. Courtesy of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.
Continue reading “Standing By Yamasaki”
Categories
Events

Ladue Estates House Tour Next Saturday

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has declared that May is Historic Preservation Month, and this year’s theme is “Celebrating America’s Treasures.” St. Louis is ready to celebrate, and here is one of this month’s first events!

Modern STL is proud to team with the Trustees of Ladue Estates to bring you the first ever Open House and Walking Tour of the first-ever Missouri mid-century modern neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places! Four houses will be open for your enjoyment. At 11am, noon and 1 pm, take a guided tour of the homes on West Ladue Estates Drive presented by residents Lea Ann Baker (the heroine who spent 3 years completing the National Register application) and architect David Connally.

Saturday, May 7, 2011
10 am – 2 pm
Ladue Estates, Creve Coeur MO 63141
$10 admission – $5 for Modern StL members

Details and directions here.

Categories
Demolition Hyde Park North St. Louis

Nord St. Louis Turnverein Almost Gone

Here’s the view looking southwest from 20th and Salisbury today. The north and south gymnasiums of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein are down to the foundation walls, with only the center section that bridges the alley still standing tall.

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Hyde Park North St. Louis

Ike and Tina at the Turnverein

After demolition of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein started this week, our intern Christian Frommelt was re-watching a clip of well-known Club Imperial dancer Teddy Cole and noticed that he gives a little advertisement for an event at the Turnverein (then called auf Englisch North St. Louis Turner Hall) with Ike and Tina Turner. He says it around 2:45.