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Demolition Housing North St. Louis O'Fallon

Florissant Center Apartments

by Michael R. Allen

The sturdy 36-unit Florissant Center Apartments are undergoing demolition, to be replaced by new construction. The demolition is representative of a larger planning hostility toward large-scale unsubsidized multi-unit apartment buildings. The city government is discouraging the renovation of apartment buildings for apartment use, favoring either conversion into upscale, larger condominium-style units or outright demolition and replacement with new construction. The only sort of multi-unit apartment building that city planners seem to favor is the federally-subsidized, income-restricted sort. While income-restricted apartment buildings are certainly needed, market-rate apartment housing is equally needed by thousands of people. There are many people who cannot qualify for mortgages, or who would rather not own property, whose presence in the city is beneficial. Students, young couples, elderly people, disabled people and others who may prefer apartment living aren’t the undesirable folks city planners make them out to be nowadays. Renters bring energy to a neighborhood.

The planners’ disdain for rental housing, though, stems less from a hatred of renters than from a tendency to not question the profit-drive desires of developers who can make more money from selling larger living spaces than from rental units — without having to stick around and maintain the buildings they renovate or build. Developing and maintaining quality apartment housing requires patience and commitment, values many developers don’t have — or won’t allow themselves in their rush to make money.

The trend to destroy apartment buildings is short-sighted, of course. Apartment housing usually is more dense than what replaces it, and thus makes for more street life and greater population. A city as desperately in need of increasing its population as St. Louis will kill itself if it does anything but increase the number of new apartment units (along with numbers of other kinds of units, of course). Planners who view apartments as obstacles to big projects and big sales are hurting St. Louis.

The Florissant Center Apartments are better-built than whatever will replace them. Dating from the late 1910’s, the building exemplifies the best tendencies in simple Craftsman stock design, with ample fenestration and restrained ornament. (I am pleased to mention that Larry Giles salvaged nearly all of the ornamental terra cotta from the building.) The interior courtyard affords some privacy for tenants as they enter and exit the building but also encourages interaction among them in what is a transitional space between public and private. The materials used are among the best from that time: birch wood, solid Hydraulic-Press-Brick face-brick and stock terra cotta ornament of local design. Even in the early stage of demolition, the building is sound enough to rescue. The still-level floors that we saw inside indicate that the structure could have stood at least another 100 years. The location across the street from O’Fallon Park is simply lovely.

Categories
Demolition Downtown

Lost: Herkert & Meisel Building

by Michael R. Allen

The building in 1977. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive.

The stately Herkert & Meisel Building (originally built by the Semple, Birge & Company Company as a warehouse) was built in 1874 and is depicted in Compton and Dry’s noted 1875 Pictorial St. Louis. In the last two decades of its life, the building stood as the only documented building depicted on the atlas standing in the downtown commercial core save the nearby Old Post Office and the Old Courthouse. (A small storefront building at Locust and 10th streets may date to the 1860’s.) The building stood as a remnant of St. Louis’s 19th-century wide use of the Italianate style for commercial architecture, a trend that was dwindling even by the time of this building’s construction. As such, it was an exceptional building in the downtown core that deserved careful preservation. However, exceptional commercial buildings have not fared well downtown.

The building’s most well-known use was as headquarters and factory for the Herkert & Meisel Trunk Company, a luggage company that used the building for almost 80 years until its demolition.  The bay window had been added to the building, but largely it was in original condition.


Rear elevation, July 1998. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive

The demolition of the Herkert & Meisel Building drew little protest. In fact, many of the proponents of demolition were purported preservationists working for the development company HRI, which sought demolition of the building for construction of a parking garage and ballroom building to serve the historic Statler and Lenox hotels that the company was renovating. Once again, the false ideal of “progress” won out, and the building was sacrified for preservation of supposedly more significant buildings nearby. What an odd foreshadowing of the demolition of the Century Building three years later, except this time the later building died and the building depicted on Pictorial St. Louis was the avowed cause of death.

Categories
Demolition LRA North St. Louis Old North

Dummitt’s Confectionary

by Michael R. Allen

Dummitt’s Confectionary on April 22, 2005.

The decaying confectionery building at 1300-04 Hebert Street in Old North arrived in the 21st century, withstanding arson, demolition and disinvestment since its construction around 1870. The building came so close to a day when someone inspired by the new energy of the neighborhood would have come to purchase and restore it. Alas, the owner was the city government’s coldest shoulder, the Land Reutilization Authority, which wrecked the building in May 2005 after its roof had collapsed.

Categories
Demolition Downtown

Herkert & Meisel Building

by Michael R. Allen

The building in 1977. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive

LOCATION: 910 Washington Avenue; Downtown; Saint Louis, Missouri
DATE OF CONSTRUCTION: 1874
DATE OF DEMOLITION: 2001

Originally built by Semple Birge & Company as an agricultural implements warehouse, the Herkert & Meisel Building at 910 Washington Avenue was built in 1874 and is depicted in Compton and Dry’s noted 1875 Pictorial St. Louis. (The second floor bay window was added later.) In the last two decades of its life, the building stood as the only building depicted on the atlas standing in the downtown commercial core save the nearby Old Post Office and the Old Courthouse. The building stood as a remnant of St. Louis’s 19th-century wide use of the Italianate style for commercial architecture, a trend that was dwindling even by the time of this building’s construction. As such, it was an exceptional building in the downtown core that deserved careful preservation. However, exceptional commercial buildings have not fared well downtown.

The building’s most well-known use was as headquarters and factory for the Herkert & Meisel Trunk Company, a luggage company that used the building for almost 80 years until its demolition.

Rear elevation, July 1998. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive

The demolition of the Herkert & Meisel Building drew little protest.  Development company HRI sought demolition of the building for construction of a parking garage and ballroom building to serve the historic Statler and Lenox hotels that the company was renovating. Once again, the false ideal of “progress” won out, and the building was sacrificed for preservation of supposedly more significant buildings nearby. What an odd foreshadowing of the demolition of the Century Building three years later, except this time the later building died and the building depicted on Pictorial St. Louis was the avowed cause of death.

Categories
Demolition Eminent Domain Gate District

Peerless Restaurant Supply Building

by Michael R. Allen

In these days of biological terrorism and digital warfare, money is rapidly flowing from the United States government and private donors into all sorts of research into biological weaponry. St. Louis University is participating in this boom by constructing a new Level-4 biolab right at the bustling intersection of Grand Avenue and Choteau Avenue. Well, okay, not exactly right on Grand. The ten-story laboratory will sit behind a carefully-groomed sea of bollards and barriers, dubbed by the deceivers and the deceived as a “plaza.” The building’s relationship to its city environment will be as detached as that of the average American researcher from the human “collateral damage” of the latest “smart” war.

The central corridor in particular has been besieged by such buildings until there literally is no sense of place left on most street corners. Sadly, even major intersections — would-be locations for great visual interest — have been spoiled by the occupying forces of visual cleanliness. The demolition of nearly the entire central corridor, a plan began with the horrible Mill Creek Valley clearance of the 1950’s, continues despite the supposedly greater understanding of urban design on the part of our city planners. In place of a dense and connected series of commercial strips and flats has risen a disconnected and uninspired grouping of institutional and corporate mexa-complexes, cheaply-built suburban-style housing, fast-food outlets and surface parking.

One thing that is nearly extinct in much of the central city is the small business. The new vision for this area enforces a strict use segregation outside of the residential portions (Central West End, Downtown, Midtown). City planners don’t want to see an errant diner or locksmith alongside their gleaming hospital towers and biolabs.

The St. Louis University biolab will occupy ground that the University has already cleared over the years — except for that one remaining small business, Peerless Restaurant Supply at 1124 S. Grand Boulevard. Peerless has occupied its modest, two-story commercial building since 1974 and has brought in some foot traffic to the ailing neighborhood around Grand and Chouteau. Not anymore. After a protracted legal fight against SLU’s use of eminent domain, Peerless has reached a settlement with SLU and is vacating its fine building. The building will be gone by year’s end, and the neighborhood will lose one of its last remaining small businesses.

Peerless Restaurant Supply will be relocating to St. Louis County, which often is the beneficiary of relocation from the city’s central corridor.

At least the graceful Arts-and-Crafts style buildings of the Pevely Dairy complex still stand at Grand and Choteau, saved by their compatible single use. As things stand, their preservation is essential to providing any visual beauty to one of the city’s busiest intersection. The biolab’s tendencies will be a powerful sight requiring a mighty antidote like the Pevely complex.

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

Unsafe Stay Away

Photographs by Eric Seelig

October 2004.

Before the demolition.

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: Cleaning Up

Photographs from February 28, 2005

By the end of February 2005, masons were working daily to cover the openings on the east wall of the Syndicate Trust Building, exposed when the connector structure between that building and the Century Building was removed. Other workers were picking through the rubble in the Century basement to separate out bits of steel and iron that could be sold as scrap.

Categories
2005 St. Louis Election Demolition Downtown North St. Louis South St. Louis

Some News Today

OVER AT THE CENTURY BUILDING SITE

Masons are working quickly to close up the holes in the Syndicate Trust Building. Meanwhile, the Century basement is entirely excavated. The parking garage will sit on the basement floor, which will not be removed. So some part of the 1897 building will live on for the 60 years it will take for the parking garage replacement to collapse.

Oh, and the renderings of the replacement garage continue to show less and less detail. Perhaps the plan is to make the Old Post Office look better by building the ugliest downtown garage ever next to it.

THE LITTLE BUILDING THAT DIDN’T

Wreckers recently demolished the two-story storefront building directly north of Uncle Bill’s Pancake House on South Kingshighway. The little building, respledent with braided terra cotta columns and other details, was the only traditional storefront building remaining between Connecticut (near Arsenal) and Beck (near Chippewa) streets. The building fell for a an expansion of the Uncle Bill’s parking lot. Across the street, QuickTrip is building yet another new location.

PROGRESS, IN MY BOOK

A new Big Lots has opened in the once-moribund plaza at Kingshighway and Devonshire, behind the Department of Motor Vehicles office.

BUT WAIT!

Arch City Chronicle reports that both Payless and OfficeMax in the St. Louis Marketplace are closing.

THEM KIENLEN BUNGALOWS

I love the one-story bungalows lining Kienlen Avenue north of Martin Luther King Boulevard. They are sturdy and simple, and due to road expansions now sit almost directly on the sidewalk line.

IRENE AND DARLENE — AND MIKE

I am spotting lots of paired Irene Smith for Mayor and Darlene Green for Comptroller signs, including some in Shaw. In Ward 19, the pair often gets a third wheel — Re-Elect Michael McMillan for Alderman signs.

UPDATE ON WESTERN LANES

Steve Patterson posted an informative update on the shuttered Western Lanes bowling alley in his campaign blog. Steve in running for aldermen of the alley’s ward, 25, in the Democratic primary. If he wins the primary, he’ll be the next alderman, because no other parties have any candidates. Don’t forget to vote for him — in just eleven days!

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: Excavation

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: The Last Stand

The evening light fell upon the newly-uncovered east side of the Syndicate Trust Building, revealing a colorful cross-section of walls that were once part of the connector between the Syndicate Trust and Century buildings.

A large and spectacular unexpected collapse the night before had necessitated nearly completing above-ground demolition of the Century Building. The wreckers were supposed to leave a large section standing so that they could take it down ceremoniously in front of the developers responsible for the demolition.

At around 7:45 p.m., the wrecker pulled a cable to pull down the last free-standing above-ground portion of the Century Building while Steve Stogel and other developers watched. This photograph shows the two columns before the pull. Only one column fell on the first pull.