Categories
Demolition Granite City, Illinois

Granite City Loses a Fine Building

by Michael R. Allen

Bad news from the metro east: The R.S. Holstein Company Dry Goods Building is downtown Granite City has fallen to the wrecking ball. Here we see the illogical results of reactionary planning. The building was in fine physical condition and was one of the most likely candidates for adaptive reuse downtown. However, the particular circumstances of its ownership and its being placed on a condemnation list foreclosed any chance of its future being considered as part of a broader strategy for historic preservation in the downtown area of Granite City (which still retains an impressive architectural stock). Granite City is working on a preservation plan, but to date has not enacted any effective ordinances that would render any preservation plan meaningful.

Then again, until Illinois passes legislation creating a Missouri-style historic rehabilitation tax credit, adaptive reuse of such buildings is highly unlikely.

Categories
Demolition Theory

Space, Time and the City

by Michael R. Allen

Proposition: The city is a series of arrested moments of time called “spaces.” The only way in which we know architectural spaces exist is through navigation — movement in time that suggests space.

Questions:

Who is above the law of time? Who can arrest a moment?

Who gets to define what moments are more worthy of replay through the perpetuation of some spaces and the annihilation of others?

Does the destruction of space then become an onslaught against time itself? The destruction of an arrested moment seems futile. In the end, we all have time and only some us seem to have spaces.

Ultimately, no one can own a moment. Such ownership would require control of time itself. Whether or not anyone can own a space in time is also questionable.

Moments are frightening to anyone who wants total control of history. To those who find in the arrested moments some delight, time is not an erasure of our works or of our dominance but a succession of joy. One moment’s passage into the next creates a new possibility — like movement across the urban landscape from one building to the next.

As we move through time, we create spaces built out of moments. Viewed in light of a live lived in time, preservation of space is the suggestion that certain momentary experiences are joyous and worth repeated experience, and that the coexistence of such experiences is desirable. Those who disregard such moments seem to suggest that time itself should be conquered for a unitary idea.

(Photograph: Demolition of a storefront building at the southeast corner of Union and St. Louis, August 2006.)

Categories
Demolition Documentation People

Worth Watching: Vanishing STL

by Michael R. Allen

Anyone who spends much time studying the lost buildings of the city — especially those in the central corridor — is bound to run into architect Paul Hohmann. Now chief architect for Pyramid Architects, Paul has been involved in many rehabilitation projects over the years. Privately, Paul has studied our city’s historic architecture and amassed a wealth of knowledge and photographs. Sometimes I have concluded that Paul and I are the among only a handful of people in the city to have paid attention to an obscure building that was demolished — or at least the among the few who still mourn its loss and recall its details.

Now, Paul is sharing his record of lost buildings through a new blog specifically dedicated to local buildings that have been demolished since 1990, Vanishing STL. So far, Paul has posted two entries. The most recent is on the well-known Beaumont Medical Building on Olive Street, wrecked for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts building. The other entry is about the lesser-known Olympia Apartments at Vandeventer and West Pine.

The entries have abundant photographs to covey both the facts and the beauty of these lost buildings. While the perspective is retrospective, notice the present perfect tense of the blog name. The name is apt given that the vanishing of the historic city is far from over, and far from slowing.

Categories
Demolition South St. Louis Southampton

Avalon Demolition Threat?

Gregali: Tear down the Avalon – Shawn Clubb (Southwest City Journal, January 10)

Tear It Down (Brick City, January 10)

Categories
Central West End CORTEX Demolition

O. Morse Shoe Company

by Michael R. Allen

Photograph taken on June 14, 2006 (Paul Hohmann).

LOCATION: 235 Boyle Avenue; Central West End; St. Louis, Missouri
DATE OF CONSTRUCTION: 1924
DATE OF DEMOLITION: October – November 2006
ARCHITECT: L.S. Schaffner

The sturdy building familiar to most people as the Shaughnessy-Kneip-Hawe Paper Company Building dates to 1924, when it was built as a factory for the O. Morse Show Company. The architect was L.S. Schaffer, and the factory cost $30,000 to build. At the time, the design was very much on the cutting edge in its anticipation of the Art Deco style, which had yet to be formally identified in America.

The concrete-framed building was two stories tall will a tall basement story, and was articulated in brown brick with projecting piers and large steel-sash windows providing the variation on the base. The building was fairly massive on its two street-facing elevations: it was thirteen bays wide on Boyle and seven bays wide on Duncan. The form was functional and streamline. However, the architectural significance lay in the buff terra cotta ornament found in the frieze under the cornice and in rosettes at the second floor of each pier that feature a projecting lion’s mouth (echoed in other local buildings, notably the Robert E. Lee Hotel, built in 1927). The center five bays on Duncan and the center nine bays on Boyle rose to a somewhat higher frieze than do the outer bays, and the frieze on those sections featured abstract rosettes with conical projections that were somewhat exaggerated in a manner straight out of the Art Deco style. The lower friezes featured intertwined floral elements in a rolling wave pattern that are somewhat abstracted. The terra cotta’s color and execution were dazzling.

The beauty disappeared as part of the CORTEX project. The site was selected by city planners as the site for a new headquarters building for biotech company Solae. This building would be neither the first nor last architectural casualty of CORTEX, envisioned by city planners as a nationally-significant biotech district. The CORTEX redevelopment ordinance encompasses 246 acres and numerous historic buildings in the Central West End and Midtown, in an area roughly bounded by Vandeventer Avenue on the east, Chouteau Avenue on the south, Taylor Avenue on the west and Forest Park Avenue on the north.

There has yet to be substantive public debate on the urban planning aspects of CORTEX. The blighting and redevelopment ordinances for the project, introduced by Alderman Joseph Roddy (D-17th), sailed through the Board of Aldermen with unanimous votes. Most opposition comes from business and building owners who do not want to be displaced. Many people who would have critical perspectives, including architects, planners and preservationists, learned of CORTEX only after it was a done deal.

There was some question as to whether the Morse Shoe Company Building’s demolition would have to be reviewed by the city’s Preservation Board, since the building stood in a preservation review district. CORTEX’s enabling ordinances apparently trumped existing preservation review laws, and the Board never reviewed the permit.

Many people don’t realize what redevelopment powers CORTEX is granted by law. The impact of those powers needs to be debated fully and mitigated so that sensible urban planning and preservation can guide the redevelopment of the area. There is no reason why a building like the Morse Shoe Company building could not be successfully rehabbed as part of CORTEX. No reason, that is, other than the fact that those who might suggest such a course have not been included in planning.

Of course, it’s not too late to have debate and make changes to the big plans for CORTEX.

Categories
Demolition Forest Park Southeast Preservation Board

4485 Vista Decision Deferred

by Michael R. Allen

Today, without discussion, the Preservation Board voted unanimously to defer for six months consideration of the demolition application for 4485 Vista Avenue.

We have six months to find a better future than destruction. Ideas?

Categories
Demolition Forest Park Southeast Preservation Board

Preservation Board to Consider Demolition of Unique House in "The Grove"

by Michael R. Allen

On the agenda for Monday’s meeting of the St. Louis Preservation Board is the demolition of a unique house at 4485 Vista Avenue in “the Grove.” The city’s Land Reutilization Authority owns the house and is applying for demolition along with Alderman Joseph Roddy (D-17th).

Check out the last photograph on this page of a report that I wrote on the condition of Taylor Avenue, which runs to the west of the house. You’ll see that 4485 Vista is a wide, symmetrical side-gabled frame home with a center-hall plan. The centered doorway is flanked by pairs of windows, with one dormer centered above each pair. This simplicity is almost rustic — no surprise given that the center-hall house was a common choice for Midwestern farms in the nineteenth century. Very few homes of this type exist in the city of St. Louis, and no other can be found in the Grove. The date of construction is not definitive, but it’s possible this house dates to the period when the Adams Grove area was subdivided as the Laclede Race Course Addition to the city in 1875.

This house is a unique home and clearly eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Hopefully, the Preservation Board will block demolition so that a respectful owner will purchase the building from the city.

Earlier, the LRA applied for a demolition permit for the house in 2004 and was denied by the Cultural Resources Office and the Preservation Board.

If you’d like to comment on the demolition, there are several ways. You can attend Monday’s meeting of the Preservation Board at 4:00 p.m. in the 12th floor conference room of the Locust Building, 1015 Locust. You can call the staff of the Cultural Resources Office at 314-622-3400. Also, you can send written testimony to Kate Shea, Director of Cultural Resources, at SheaK(at)stlouiscity.com.

Categories
Brecht Butcher Buildings Demolition Northside Regeneration Old North

Demolition Permit Issued for Brecht Butcher Supply Buildings

by Michael R. Allen

On October 31, the city issued an emergency demolition permit for the burned part of the Brecht Butcher Supply Company Buildings. The contract supposedly has been let to Bellon Wrecking. Oddly enough, the burned section has been left unsecured since the devastating fire last month. There has been no fence around the building, and the permit didn’t come until three weeks after the fire.

While I am upset to see the building go, I am also upset that the Building Division did not see fit to order the owners to erect a fence or board up a building that was condemned on October 10 and was in terrible, dangerous condition inside. The building is directly across Cass Avenue from the Greyhound Station, too, making its post-fire appearance a rather sour introduction to this city.

When a building this large has such a terrible fire, safety precautions should be taken until renovation or demolition can begin. It’s an insult to residents of the near north side than neither the Building Division nor Blairmont Associates LC — which can afford to finance millions of dollars in property purchases — did not see fit to secure the burned buildings.

Hopefully, the demolition site will be secure although I doubt it. I also hope that the wreckers only demolish the fire-damaged center section, and leave the flanking buildings standing. Even though the remaining buildings will look strange severed from the connector, there is no need to lose all of them. Cass Avenue needs some architectural stability, and given how little historic fabric remains it is very reasonable to preserve what is left.

Categories
Demolition Forest Park Southeast

Gasometer Love

Someone (with the wry Flickr username of “flickr_screen_name”) has posted a photographic ode to the gasometer at Laclede Gas Company Pumping Station G on Chouteau Avenue in Forest Park Southeast. Here are the photos.

The gasometer, built in 1901 and rebuilt in the 1940’s, stands next to a delightful Renaissance Revival pumping station that will be renovated for condo use. The gasometer is not as fortunate, and is slated for demolition.

Categories
Chicago Demolition Louis Sullivan

Demolition Started on Chicago’s Wirt Dexter Building

by Michael R. Allen

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that emergency demolition of the Wirt Dexter Building began today. The building, designed by Adler & Sullivan and built in 1887, burned in a huge fire on Tuesday.

Try to stanch the pain of tragedy by reading Carl Sandburg’s poem “Skyscraper.” The poem invokes the golden age of American tall buildings, started by rapid architectural innovation in which the Wirt Dexter Building was an integral part. The roots of the American skyscraper pass back through what is now a blackened wreck and what will next week be nothing but rubble. Although the building is falling, it was one of many that — through narrow piers, wide windows, pronounced height and embrace of the metal frame — proclaimed to Chicago and the world that a new soaring architectural form was being born in America. That legacy remains vibrant, even as the Wirt Dexter building dies a senseless death.