Category: Abandonment

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Abandonment Architecture Historic Preservation Illinois Southern Illinois Theaters

Massac Theater Crumbles in Metropolis, Illinois

by Michael R. Allen


The charming art deco Massac Theater graces Main Street in Metropolis, Illinois, a small town at the southern tip of Illinois well-known for DC Comics’ designation of the town as “Hometown of Superman” in 1972. Although the front elevation appears well-maintained, the theater has been completely abandoned since the late 1980s, when a radio station using the front section of the building moved out. The theater screened its last film, Superman, in 1978.

The Massac Theater opened in 1938 with 537 seats, a large size for a town the size of Metropolis. The front and side elevations were laid in buff brick; polychrome cream and blue terra cotta disrupt the front elevation with vertical finial-topped piers to each side of the entrance joined a ribbon of portal windows. A jazzy marquee, still intact, further enhances the exterior. Entrances on each side of a box office lead to a low-ceilinged front lobby which expands into a larger lobby space. Although the partition between the lobby and the auditorium is now gone, twin staircases with fine metal rail detailing, probably leading to a missing balcony, indicate some sort of atrium in the lobby. Past the staircases is the bow-trussed auditorium, now cordoned off with a plywood wall.

Here is a view of the lobby.


The view below looks toward the front entrance from inside of the theater. Note the staircases.


The auditorium is shocking — the walls are stripped down to backing block, the seats and flooring missing, and the roof is largely collapsed. Weather-beaten sections of roof deck cover the floor of the auditorium.


Condemned by the city government, the theater sits forlorn. The radio station left behind myriad record, files, desks and other furnishings. No one knows what the future will bring here. Metropolis has not had a movie theater since the Massac closed, but with access to nearby Paducah and its multiplex theater on sprawling Hinkleville Road, the demand for reopening a single-screen downtown movie theater is low. Most of the entertainment in Metropolis nowadays takes place at the giant Harrah’s casino that blocks the downtown area from its riverfront on the Ohio River.

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Abandonment Detroit Green Space land use landbanking

Detroit Park Sale Plan is Hasty

by Michael R. Allen

The administration of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is proposing selling off 92 of the city’s 367 parks. Most of the parks on the sale list are pocket parks and small playgrounds, many of which are surrounded by vacant lots and some of which are in severe disrepair. Kilpatrick seems to think that some of the park sites would be ripe for new development. The plan raises the issue of public space planning in deindustrialized cities. The amount of park space in Detroit reflects peak density that has not existed in decades. Does the city need so much park space when so much of the city itself is green ghetto land?

Maybe not. Detroit is seeing redevelopment right now. Kilpatrick’s interest in selling the parks shows confidence in their having some market value as lots. The city has shrunk, but as it grows it may need the parks. While there are many of the 92 parks that probably will never be useful, there are some that are useful now and would be useful in neighborhoods where infill construction will lead to higher density. Staking out public space now will ensure that neighborhoods don’t lack amenities that belong to all residents.

Detroit might consider holding off on a massive sale, and releasing the parks one by one after further community input and investigation of development activity. Perhaps some parks should just be mothballed — infrastructure demolished and grass planted. One thing we learn from cities like Detroit is the inherent power of a vacant urban lot. From the vacant lots will spring the development of the future — and public space needs to be part of that.

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Abandonment Documentation Media

Sonic Atrophy Returns

Sonic Atrophy has returned to the internet after a two year absence. The website features photographs of abandoned places along with narratives on the anonymous site creator’s experiences visiting and photographing the places. Most of the locations featured on Sonic Atrophy are in the St. Louis region, but some are located in other places including Peoria and Cairo, Illinois and Gary, Indiana.  Visit the website here.

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Abandonment land use landbanking Rust Belt

The Crisis of Abandonment

by Michael R. Allen

A recent article published on Preservation Online entitled “Winging It in Buffalo” provokes thoughts about the nature of widespread urban abandonment. In the article, writer Stephanie Smith discusses the situation of Buffalo, New York, where city leaders have started a “Five by Five” program to bring its vacant building rate closer to five percent within five years by demolishing 1,000 buildings a year. City planners there estimate that 10,000 buildings should be demolished.

This campaign to “right size” the city makes sensible historic preservation planning next to impossible. The Buffalo preservation board has to consider 1,000 applications a year. There is no way that preservation board members can even begin to make sense of what comes across their desks. At the same time, city leaders at least pay lip service to the idea that massive clearance is ultimately detrimental to neighborhoods.

The larger issue here is relevant to St. Louis and other cities: widespread abandonment creates public safety and land use crises of unprecedented scale. Natural time dooms many historic buildings, while political time expedites that process. Economic time brings solutions slowly, and may not move fast enough for the comfort of residents who remain in areas where abandonment is rampant. While the federal government has spent billions of dollars on supposed crises in nations like Iraq, we have failed to direct it to play a meaningful role to resolve our urban crises. Local problems rely on local solutions — and severely limited local budgets. How and when do we break from this cycle?

Thanks to my colleague Lindsey Derrington for the link.

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Abandonment Regionalism

Magic & Life

What has become of the abandoned buildings mentioned in my whimsical short essay “Abandoned Buildings in Saint Louis: Magic & Death,” published in 2004?

Enright Middle School: Under renovation.

Carondelet Coke plant: Scheduled for demolition.

City Hospital Tower: Already gone then (although it still haunts the dreams of the restless); site still undeveloped.

Armour Packing Plant: Proposed for demolition; site now for sale.

St. Mary’s Infirmary: Purchased for renovation; listing on National Register of Historic Places in process.

These are big changes. In a few short years, the architectural narrative of the region has changed as major abandoned buildings have been renovated or demolished. Urban explorers occasionally complain that there are no “big buildings” left accessible. That’s not entirely true, especially on the Illinois side of the river, but reflects a distinct reclamation by developers. While my theoretical bearings are still formative, I see abandonment diminishing in favor of reclamation as the dominant narrative of marginal property around St. Louis. Reclamation is value-neutral, though, so this shift in the major narrative is no guarantee that the stewards of these places are making wise decisions.

Reclamation demands a counter-movement that clearly and consistently promotes an ethic of architectural stewardship based on a respect for history, knowledge of ecology and an embrace of urbanity. That’s a lot more difficult than waxing poetic and punch-drunk about the views from the rooftops of forgotten factories (although I do that), or automatically celebrating new development because it replaces something troublesome and frightening.

How about a counter-movement that aims to resolve the contradictions of reclamation in order to rededicate St. Louis to metropolitan life? Who’s in?

Unexpected magic lives on, though, as long as there are buildings, full moons and flowing rivers. As I age, I take less advantage of these moments than I did even three years ago — but seek them out as much as I can. The rest of the time I spend on the ideas needed to ensure that no matter how much our region changes we still have the places that fill us with awe.

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Abandonment East St. Louis, Illinois

The Lights of East St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

With a cool spring breeze and great jazz on the truck radio, I found myself driving through East St. Louis last night. I don’t mean driving on the highway, either — I came in from the south through Rush City on 19th Street, headed east on Bond Avenue, north on 17th Street, east on Broadway until I was on the Eads Bridge headed back home. This was around 6:30 p.m., and already the sun had set to make way for a charcoal night sky.

While it was dark out, East St. Louis was very dark. There are several reasons, but foremost is the lack of remaining occupied houses. The loss of buildings has meant the loss of life and light, factors that keep a neighborhood from feeling like a ghost town after nightfall. There is also the lack of adequate street lighting that enhances the feeling that one is not in a city but some other ethereal place not quite settled enough to be a city but too populated to be a rural area.

As I drove north on industrial 17th street, where almost every building, factory and lot is abandoned and there are few streetlights, I glanced eastward. There I saw the St. Louis skyline glimmering as if no ghost town at all stood just to the east. I had a strange feeling, and felt vulnerable.

No, I did not fear any trouble at human hands. I felt a worse fear — that East St. Louis is something that has life only in the past and death in the future. The present moment is thus a terrible recognition.

Of what? Perhaps the painful conclusion that just east of my city another city may be effectively dead — but still inhabited by people who need jobs, schools and city services that a dead city cannot provide.

Categories
Abandonment Riverfront Urban Exploration

USS Inaugural Still Around

Remember the USS Inaugural that was moored on the St. Louis wharf to serve as a museum? During the 1993 flood, the former Navy minesweeper was swept away itself. However, it did not get very far. As “Memory_machine” tells us in his blog entry “Undergroundozarks goes to the Library / The Wreck of the Inaugural”, the wreck of the ship is just south of the MacArthur Bridge, and readily visible.

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Abandonment LRA North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Pruitt Igoe

Pruitt-Igoe Site the Key to Blairmont’s Scheme?

by Michael R. Allen

If one studies the map of Blairmont holdings that we posted last month, an interersting picture emerges. Besides other concentrations that I have noted, all of the holdings seem to center on one site: the vacant site of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project.

All of the holdings fan out from that location, a city-owned mega-parcel frequently discussed as the nexus of new development on the near north side. Recall that nearly ten years ago the administration of Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr. embraced a plan to build an 18-hole golf course surrounded by suburban-style housing, using the Pruitt-Igoe site and much of the St. Louis Place neighborhood.

Jump forward to 1999-2000, and one may remember the Fifth Ward Land Use Plan created by Schweyte Architects and vigorously opposed by architects and preservationists, including the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, Landmarks Association and former St. Louis Place resident Robert Myers. That plan called for the demolition of hundreds of buildings located in the footprint in which Blairmont has been purchasing its holdings. The Pruitt-Igoe site was key to the recommendations of that plan, which seems to be one guide to Blairmont’s scope of activities.

Is the Pruitt-Igoe site key to whatever project Blairmont might be concocting? It’s hard to say without word from the company’s representatives. But it seems that acquisition of that site is essential to any development Blairmont may be planning.

Categories
Abandonment South St. Louis

Fallout

Photograph taken at the Carondelet Coke Plant by Claire Nowak-Boyd (September 3, 2006).

Categories
Abandonment Adaptive Reuse Gary, Indiana Midtown

Plans for Church Ruins Gardens Going Nowhere in Gary and St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

Apparently the City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana still stands abandoned. Last summer, the city came up with a plan to demolish an annex and retain the sanctuary as a ruins garden, but that plan has not advanced due to lack of funding.

Meanwhile, the National Memorial Church of God in Christ in Midtown St. Louis also still stands abandoned, although more secure and completely gutted. When will Grand Center, Inc., the owner of the church, make good on their promise to turn that church into a ruins garden? The last time workers were on site was in 2004, when a crew filled the basement with gravel.

The delay in Gary is due in large part because there are no private interests who want to lay claim to City Methodist, either for preservation or clearance. The burden of dedicating the church to a new future falls onto local government, which is grossly underfunded. Chicago preservation groups have no interest in getting involved in Gary, which is separated by both state lines and states of mind.

In St. Louis, though, the Church of God in Christ is owned by a non-profit redevelopment corporation that is pretty good at fundraising, even if it produces lousy urban planning. Here they have a really great idea and the financial health to pursue further fundraising, but oddly have let the plan go dormant.

Converting damaged church sanctuaries into ruins gardens is a great idea that repurposed spaces difficult to convert for profitable uses. The architecture of these two churches in particular inspires contemplation and hope. City Methodist has to be one of the most humane giant buildings I’ve ever seen, while Church of God in Christ is relatively small and austere. These buildings have each suffered fires and have passed any point at which church life would have returned. While restoration for other uses is feasible, these spaces have gained wonderful second lives as great, if illicit, public spaces. Purposeful conversion to ruins gardens would make their second-hand functions safer for all and socially acknowledged. Hopefully, these projects can be revived.