Category: Demolition

Categories
Demolition Fox Park Historic Preservation South St. Louis St. Louis Building Division

How About Condemnation for Repair?

by Michael R. Allen

Here’s the sort of neighborhood stabilization issue that you probably won’t hear being discussed by any mayoral candidates. Above is the corner storefront at 2001 S. Jefferson (at Allen) in Fox Park. Built in 1892, the two-story building is a contributing resource to the Compton Hill Certified Local Historic District, and anchors the first solid corner of Fox Park on Jefferson south of I-44.

Believe it or not, this building has been condemned for demolition by the Building Division! (Of course, the New Vision Demolition banner on the front takes some of the surprise out.) In June 2007, the Building Division issued a condemnation for demolition order. Why? Take a look.

This is definitely not a good situation here, but it is hardly grounds for demolition. This building has that great detail found on some of the city’s neighborhood commercial buildings: the wall extends to shield the end of a multi-story gallery porch at the rear that provides access to residential flats above.

Obviously, the porch collapsed. Permit records show that a permit to replace the “rear deck” was issued on April 2, 2007. Obviously, the owners failed to replace the porch and left the building in terrible shape. The Building Division was wise to act with condemnation, by why is the order “for demolition”? The Building Division is allowed to condemn buildings “for repair,” and in this case should have done so. The loss of the porch caused damage, but not anything that makes the building unsound.

Of course, a condemnation for demolition order could scare a problem property owner to sell. However, that order could also lead to a building’s being placed in a city demolition package down the road, no matter if the building truly is unsound under the definitions established in our public safety laws and preservation ordinances. The good thing is that a demolition permit in a local historic district will go to the Cultural Resources Office. In this case, neither owner nor the Building Division has pursued demolition — for now.

What is then accomplished by this condemnation order? Very little, except creating another threat to this building. Clearly, the order has made no impact on the owners, who have not even removed much of the debris behind the building.

Instead of condemnation for demolition, an order used too often, why not condemn buildings for repair with enforceable deadlines? There is, after all, more than one way to enforce the public safety laws, but the Building Division too often relies on the ineffective, destructive “condemnation for demolition.” The Building Division would do well to help neighborhoods stabilize their neighborhoods while preserving valuable buildings. Clearly, demolition contractors would not get as much work but hopefully better-paying construction work would be encouraged.

Whoever is Mayor on April 7 should make changes at the Building Division. At the very least, all demolition decisions should be made by a qualified structural engineer. At the most, there should be a reorientation of code enforcement away from the mindset that the Division should eliminate all that is broken. The Building Division’s goal should be fixing all that is broken for the benefit of our citizens, and reserving demolition orders for those cases where public safety is truly threatened.

Categories
Demolition JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Corner Storefront No More

by Michael R. Allen

The corner storefront at 2742 Cass Avenue, subject of the previous post “Corner Storefront on Cass Avenue” (May 14, 2008), is under demolition.

There is little left of the once-beautiful building.

Categories
Demolition East St. Louis, Illinois Industrial Buildings Metro East

The Pens

by Michael R. Allen

The new Mississippi River Bridge entails construction of an extension of I-70 that will run parallel to St. Clair Avenue in East St. Louis. As part of this project, much of the National City Stockyards in East St. Louis will be demolished. While the abandoned Armour and Hunter packing plants will not be disturbed, the landmark concrete stock pens will be gone forever by year’s end. The flip side is that the Illinois Department of Transportation will be conducting archaeological work on the site that will help us learn more about the history of the stockyards.

Yesterday, I led a group of sixth graders from the College School on a tour of East St. Louis. We stopped at the stockyards, and got out of the bus to look inside the long cattle pen shown above. A security guard ushered us away, and told teacher John Colbert that we should leave because the pens were about to be demolished. In fact, we were there precisely because the pens will be demolished, removing the chance for future generations to physically connect with an important part of St. Louis’ industrial past as well as a lost system of food production. While I am not prepared to strongly advocate for saving any of the ruins of the stockyards, yesterday’s tour led me to wonder how any of the sixth graders will explain what they saw to their children. Will they drive on the I-70 connector and explain that once upon a time they stood in cattle pens on that site? Will their children care about a history that has no living physical embodiment?

Categories
Demolition North St. Louis Old North St. Louis Place

Crown Mart Plaza is a Missed Opportunity

by Michael R. Allen

City Block 599 is bounded by North Fourteenth Street on the west, Cass Avenue on the south and North Florissant Avenue on the east and north. Starting with the construction of Florissant Avenue in 1935, the block was slowly cleared across the 20th and early 21st centuries. Once a dense near north residential and commercial mixed-us block, by the 1980s the block only held two buildings. By October 2005, when I took the photograph above, the block was fully clear of buildings.

Since November, the block has risen with construction again. This time, the building that will occupy City Block 599 will be a strip mall and gas station known as Crown Mart Plaza. While a strip mall is better than an empty block, and the area desperately needs stores, the site deserves something better. The photograph above shows the Mullanphy Emigrant Home (before the April 2006 storm struck) and buildings in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood in the background. This site is a visual gateway to Old North and St. Louis Place. While Tucker Boulevard and North 13th Street are currently closed, that combined major thoroughfare will open again. When it reopens, the new Mississippi River Bridge will be completed, with its ramps dropping cars on Cass Avenue just one block east. Thousands of people will pass by this block on their way to the historic neighborhoods of the near north side.

The Crown Mart Plaza is a missed opportunity to build something on the site that is an appropriate architectural entrance to great north city neighborhoods. The first impression of north city made on many people will be another gas station rather than a building that is distinct and proclaims community support for high design standards. Some day, the Emigrant home will be rehabilitated, and Old North and St. Louis Place will begin seeing infill construction. MetroLink will pass by City Block 599 on Florissant Avenue. The Crown Mart Plaza does not anticipate the changes to come, or encourage them.

Crunden Branch Library photograph by Rob Powers, Built St. Louis.

Of course, many of us anticipated such a future for the block when the former Crunden Branch Library, owned by the city’s Land Reutilization, abruptly disappeared in August 2005. Students at Washington University recently had submitted a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places of the landmark building when the city’s Building Division wrecked the Crunden Library building. Built in 1909 and designed by Eames and Young, the Crunden Branch Library served the educational needs of area residents until 1954, when the branch moved west and the building was remodeled for use by Pulaski Bank. This building signaled the greatness of its surrounding neighborhoods, and its loss was a huge blow to the Cass Avenue street scape.

Just north of the Crunden Branch Library on Fourteenth Street stood a bus maintenance garage that dated to the 1930s. This building was a utilitarian building, and not an outstanding work of architecture, but a building that could have been adapted to many uses — including a retail strip. Since the land between this building and North Florissant was vacant, its footprint is remarkably similar to that proposed for Crown Mart Plaza.

The bus garage was destroyed in a large fire on September 15, 2005, so soon after the Crunden Library demolition that bits of terra cotta from the old library still littered the straw-covered earth. Since that fire and the garage’s subsequent demolition, City Block 599 has stood vacant as rumors of retail development have swirled. If only the planned retail use could have aligned with an effort to improve the architectural character of Cass and North Florissant avenues, the tone for great development on these streets could have been set.

Categories
Central West End Demolition Historic Preservation Midtown North St. Louis

Commercial Rows Fall On Vandeventer

by Michael R. Allen

Once upon a time, on April 21, 1886, the city government issued a building permit for a continuous row of seven adjacent stores with flats above at 1121-33 N. Vandeventer. P.G. Gerhart was the developer of the $12,000 project. The result was a graceful building in the Italianate style. Striking cast iron columns supported the spans of each wide storefront opening. A wooden cornice capped the stone-clad front wall, and decorative brick corbelling continued the cornice line to a side entrance on Enright, above which the parapet wall formed a pediment to mirror the surround of the entrance. The handsome commercial row was located at a prime corner in the sought-after Midtown neighborhood, home of the city’s wealthy and middle class movers and shakers.


This was not the only such endeavor on Vandeventer, a major north-south artery here. Nor was it the Gerhart family’s only commercial row on the street. The presence of a street car line on Vandeventer along with the residential population of the area drew developers to an intensive building boom that lasted between 1875 and 1900. During that time, at least sixteen rows of adjacent stores like the Gerhart row went up. Most of these were two stories. Vandeventer must have had an urban character like no other street in the city, what with the effect of so many well-designed rows of shops.

Flash forward over 120 years, and the row is facing its demise in December 2008. After sitting vacant for a half-decade, the old row had ended up owned by someone who wanted it gone. The condition at the time of demolition was good, with no structural failures and all of the character-defining pieces still in place. The rise and fall and rising-again of Midtown had taken its toll on Vandeventer, depleting the stock of such rows to a handful by the dawn of the 21st century. Now the oldest survivor met its demise, and the street is poorer for it. Vandeventer north of Lindell Boulevard is marked by vacant lots and low-density new construction, with a handful of surviving historic buildings. This row was keeping its block on the good side of architectural wasteland status. Today, the site is yet another muddy lot adorned by spindly grass blades and blowing debris.


During demolition, wreckers from Bellon Wrecking staged work in accordance with the building’s party walls, leaving isolated sections standing untouched between areas that were demolished.

Photograph by Paul Hohmann.

Architect Paul Hohmann photographed the demolition while it was underway, and has posted an extensive number of photographs here.

The loss of the row at Vandeventer and Enright delivered a sharp blow, but it was not the only one in 2008. In July, demolition commenced at the third of the surviving rows on Vandeventer, located at 1121 N. Vandeventer. The Guardian Angels purchased the site for construction of a new facility earlier in the year.


This row contained six storefronts arranged symmetrically along Vandeventer. The storefronts also had fine cast iron columns with Ionic capitals, and the second floor had arrangements of Roman-arched windows as book ends. This row dates to a permit issued on October 18, 1895 to Mrs. L.A. Crosswhite for six adjacent stores and flats. A.M. Baker served as architect, and Thomas Kelly was contractor. The row was totally vacant when I photographed it in 2006, but its loss was still jarring. Again, this stretch has lost its landmarks, and the site of this row is now another vacant lot with a sign promising new construction in the future.

Now the only remaining commercial row on Vandeventer is the Gerhart Block, developed by another Gerhart, at the southwest intersection of Vandeventer and Laclede. The Gerhart Block dates to 1896 and was designed by August Beinke. Its French Renaissance style has strongly eclectic traits and its historic integrity is stunning. The Gerhart Block and an adjacent building on Laclede Avenue were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2003; read the nomination by Lynn Josse here.


The sad fact is that this all that remains of the commercial rows of Vandeventer. There is some solace in that what survives is one of the most exquisite and well-preserved rows on the street, with landmark designation, demolition protection and tenants.

Categories
Abandonment Demolition Fire LRA North St. Louis The Ville

Lost: The Store at Maffitt & Lambdin

by Michael R. Allen

I was looking through old photographs and found this one, taken in June 2004. The subject matter is the peculiar corner storefront once located at the southeast corner of Maffitt and Lambdin avenues in the Ville. (The address properly is 4282 Maffitt Avenue.) The Land Reutilization Authority still owns the lot on which the store buidling and a smaller concrete block building on the alley stood, and has owned the lot since at least 1989.

As the photograph indicates, a fire had struck the building and eaten much of its structural timbers, flooring and roof sheathing. What testament to our city’s masonry that the walls held despite the loss of many joists. The building truly was an exquisite wreck. I remember looking down into the basement from where the corner stoop would have been, and seeing charred wood from the upper levels atop years of accumulated debris. A man walking by said that demolition was on the way. He was proven right when the Building Division issued its demolition permits in January 2005.

The building had been vacant nearly twenty years at that point, although its architectural character was still evident. The chamfered, recessed entrance tucked under the projecting corner bay was a wonderful way to both call attention to the commercial tenant and shelter those entering and leaving the store. The tiled, sloped third floor with its timbered dormer was another fine trait. There aren’t many corner storefront buildings like this in the city, and we will never know for sure how many there ever were.

Categories
Architecture Demolition Storefront Addition

Storefront Additions: Delmar Boulevard West of Vandeventer

by Michael R. Allen

My recent post on the demolished Delmar Foods storefront addition reminded me of the trove of storefront additions on Delmar Boulevard between Vandeventer and Whittier streets. Some were lost before my time, for sure, but the remaining examples are impressive.

Of course, I cannot attest to whether or not the storefront addition and house across the street from Delmar Foods was impressive. On June 10, 2006, I photographed the storefront addition at 4162 Delmar in the midst of demolition:

The remaining gems are one block east, all on the north side of the block. Two fancy additions stand adjacent to each other at 4033 (right) and 4035 (left) Delmar.

The vacant storefront at 4035 Delmar dates to the early 1930s, and its parent house is a Second Empire town house from 1884. The storefront at 4033 Delmar houses Tennessee’s Lounge, and is less obviously an addition. The original house also dated to around 1884, and the addition to 1925. However, this was not the usual attachment, because the developer severely altered the house, removing its original roof line and building the addition into the house to completely
obscure it. According to records, the house at 4033 Delmar was the home of Gus C. Meissonier, a member of the Merchant’s Exchange. The conversion of the house of a member of the civic elite into commercial space was quite a big change.

A similar storefront addition project happened at 3963 Delmar eastward on the block, and coincidentally the space is also occupied by a lounge, Waldorf’s.

These additions tell us about the rapid and abrupt changes of our city in the early days of the twentieth century. We were booming!

Categories
Demolition Fire Historic Preservation Shaw South St. Louis

Lost Chance on Shenandoah

by Michael R. Allen

The 2007 fire that struck the four-flat at 3927-29 Shenandoah Avenue in the Shaw neighborhood eventually proved fatal. The building had been under rehabilitation when fire struck. The owners stopped paying taxes and mortgage payments, and ownership somehow split between Heartland Bank and the Land Reutilization Authority (the building straddles a lot line).

Obviously, the building was struck severely by the fire. Like most house fires, the fire spread upward and consumed the roof and second floor worst. Most of the roof sheathing was lost in the fire, leaving the building open to the elements. However, the walls had been tuckpointed and remained solid until the last days.

In October 2008, the Building Division condemned the building for demolition and sought demolition. Neighbors had filed many complaints on the condition of the house. Immediately to the west, a developer is rehabbing a similar building using historic rehab tax credits and understandably did not want a big question-mark next door.

After first being placed on the November 2008 agenda of the Preservation Board, the demolition shifted into high gear. Suddenly, the Building Division issued an emergency demolition order and paid to wreck the building. By the middle of December, it was gone. (Wonder if owner Heartland Bank got a bill for half of the cost?)

While the condition of the building was extreme, it was far from being a total loss. With solid masonry, the building was in no danger of immediate collapse. This could have been a great reconstruction project. Instead, the house went through the motions of our failed public safety laws: damage and abandonment, citizen complaints, emergency tear-down order. As the developers next door show, there is more than one way to fix a broken building, but the Building Division never seems to grasp that fact. Nor does the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) possess sufficient legal authority to prevent a senseless demolition like this one; the office and the Preservation Board were at the mercy of the Building Division, which controls what matters reach consideration of our preservation agency and its citizen commission. The CRO cannot override an emergency order, no matter how silly it is (and many are).

The neighbors’ momentary complaints are addressed, but they ultimately lose a remarkable street scape. On a block with only two gaps in continuous historic building line, both across the street, this demolition stands out. The demolition stands out even more since the demolished house is one of a row of five near-copies of the same plan built in 1903. defined by rusticated limestone front elevations, central porches and projecting bays on each end, the row was a handsome group.

Looking at one of the extant members of this group, one sees the potential that the house at 3927-29 Shenandoah Avenue had, even in its fire-damaged state.

Demolition matters as much in a neighborhood as dense as Shaw as it does in a ravaged built environment like Old North. I would write that the only difference is why the buildings matter, but that would be false. The reason senseless demolitions harm our neighborhoods is because they erode the sense of place. Take away the last two buildings on a north side block, and the last vestige of the block’s urban character is gone forever. Take away one house on an intact block face in Shaw, and that block face is no longer intact. That brings a difference as big as taking down the last building standing. Besides, it’s not just a matter of blocks or neighborhoods but ultimately a matter of stewardship of this interconnected mass of resources we call St. Louis.

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Demolition North St. Louis Storefront Addition

Storefront Addition: Delmar Foods

by Michael R. Allen

The bow-front, limestone house at 4171 Delmar Boulevard was once an elegant home in the Queen Anne style. Later, it became the backdrop for a one-story commercial bump-out that ended its days as Delmar Foods. Like many homes on the Delmar streetcar line, this one let traffic and density guide the way to a storefront addition during the peak years of St. Louis population boom. the house was empty by 1994, but the storefront remained occupied for another decade. Demolition of both came in 2007. The photograph above dates to November 2006.

Categories
Demolition Fire Housing McRee Town

Folsom Avenue Blues – Part Two

by Michael R. Allen

Here are some images showing the 3900-4000 block of Folsom Avenue in McRee Town on October 31, 2004. As the images show, the castellated two-flats were more abundant then, providing a sense of their effect on the block.

One of the buildings had recently experienced a suspicious fire.