Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: It’s Almost Gone

Photograph by Michael R. Allen

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: Getting Closer

Image taken by Robin Hirsch from the neighboring Art St. Louis Gallery, 917 Locust Street, Third Floor

Categories
Demolition Events South St. Louis

Truman Center Sale

From the Rehabbers’ Club listserv:

I will be holding a public sale of the contents of the Truman
Restorative nursing home (5700 Arsenal) on Feb 16-19. Everything
in the building or attached to it will be for sale from toilets,
sinks, marble dividers, chairs, desks, faucets, computers, doors,
lights, hospital beds, kitchen equipment. I’ll even pay you to take
away some items (lights & doors)!!

Everything in the building must go as it will be demolished in
preparation for building new homes on the site.

Hope you can attend!
Thanks,
Mark Benckendorf
314-413-0182

Categories
Demolition Salvage South St. Louis

Salvaging Our Lady of Sorrows Convent

Our Lady of Sorrows Convent (built 1927) will soon be emptied out so that demolition can begin.

Mementos, furniture, house wares, interior wood trim, doors, hardwood floors, bathroom fixtures and more will be sold

General Public Sale
Saturday, January 29, 2005
9 a.m. – 3 p.m.

The OLS Convent is a bit west up the street from Rhodes and Kingshighway.

All proceeds will go to the Our Lady of Sorrows Building With Faith Capital Campaign.

thanks,
Joe Daus

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

What a Difference One Day Makes

Images taken by Robin Hirsch from the neighboring Art St. Louis Gallery, 917 Locust Street, Third Floor

Thursday, January 6

Friday, January 7

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

Night Wrecking at the Century Building

Photographs from December 27 and 29 by Michael R. Allen


Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

The Demolition of the Century Building: Erasing the Edges

Photographs by Michael R. Allen

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

We Lose More Than the Century Building

by Michael R. Allen

Published in The Commonspace, December 2004.

Many readers know that with the ongoing demolition of the Century Building, downtown Saint Louis has been altered forever. With each swing of the wrecking ball comes another dislocated load of precious marble, steel and other parts of a formidable building that refuses to die easily. Each swing, however, takes this city closer to the sad day on which nothing resembling the great Century Building will stand on Ninth Street. The ruptured streetscape will only get worse as the demolition progresses and, inevitably, the replacement structure—a dull and lifeless parking garage to serve Steve Stogel and the DFC Group’s Old Post Office renovation—begins to rise.

Everyone knows that the Century Building will never return. Few realize that something even greater disappears with the Century Building: the last intact district of great office buildings in all of downtown and the city.

That’s right; after the demolition is finished, there will be no spot anywhere in St. Louis where one can stand and be completely surrounded by the magnificent historic office buildings that made this city’s downtown a worthy—and perhaps superior—architectural competitor to Chicago’s. Nowhere. There are other impressive parts of downtown, notably along Washington Avenue, where one can stand and be surrounded by grand late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century wholesale commercial buildings, remnants of America’s second-largest garment district. Yet there is not a single district like the Old Post Office office building district, the definite core of downtown since the 1880’s.

Throughout the debate over preserving the Century Building, no one made this point very well. Many people mentioned other sound reasons for preserving the Century Building: old building are superior to parking garages and bland new construction; its date of construction, 1896, makes it one of the oldest downtown office buildings; its marble facade is a singularity in the Midwest, if not in America; its history as one of the first hybrid office buildings in St. Louis, replete with theater; home to the famous Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney department store and the local White Star Line—remember the R.M.S. Titanic?—office; its undeniably majestic beauty; and the fact that the Century Building generates more street-level activity than a huge and disruptive parking garage.

While these are great arguments for preserving the Century Building, they are but elements of a larger argument for retaining the architectural integrity of the Old Post Office district. At the Ninth and Olive intersection stands an amazing array of buildings: Alfred B. Mullett’s Old Post Office, the visual anchor of eastern downtown since its completion in 1882 and the current rationale for the Century Building’s woes; the 1906 Frisco Building, by one of St. Louis’s most prolific and important architectural firms, Eames and Young; the 1926 Paul Brown Building by Preston Bradshaw, currently under renovation; and the Century Building, by the Chicago firm of Raeder and Coffin. Up and down Ninth Street are the Mark Twain (formerly Maryland) Hotel, by St. Louisan Albert Groves and featuring some of the most whimsical ornamental pieces made by local Winkle Terra Cotta Company, and the 1891 Board of Education Building by Issac Taylor, a highly prolific and important local architect.

Along Olive, of course, is a lovely canyon that is no longer architecturally intact but still retains a highly urban scale. Immediate to the Ninth and Olive intersection are H.E. Roach’s 1906 Syndicate Trust Building, joined to the Century since 1912; the combined landmarks of the 1906 Wright Building by Eames and Young and the 1918 Arcade Building by Tom Barnett; and the stunning Romanesque Revival first headquarters of Bell Telephone, from 1888 and designed by the firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. To both east and west along Olive, other landmarks abound. Many of these buildings replaced earlier spectacular office buildings.

This district earlier lost some of its coherence with the 1969 addition of the towering Laclede Gas Building at Eighth and Olive as well as with the 1971 demolition of the Victoria Building, which was the rebuilt 1893 St. Nicholas Hotel by none other than Louis Sullivan and the pointless removal of the upper floors of Isaac Taylor’s 1891 Columbia Building (now Hamilton Jewelers). Both of these buildings were at the corner of Eighth and Locust. Also lost on this corner was the entire row of small commercial buildings that stood north of the Victoria Building along Locust, the last of which was demolished in 2001. Still, the Old Post Office core remains incredibly intact, especially around the corner of Ninth and Olive.

I offer all of these names and dates not only to catalog the importance of the intersection but also to offer glimpses into the larger interplay of St. Louis architectural history in which the Century Building is situated. Of course, the Century Building is an inherently valuable structure, but its value is enhanced by its neighborhood—just as it enhances its neighbors’ value. Each of the collection of buildings near Ninth and Olive exhibits a remarkable sympathy to the others, with elegant variations in materials, color, style and massing.

The Old Post Office district, however grand, takes a definite second place behind the even grander office building district that radiated from the corner of Seventh and Olive. That district, of course, is long gone. Steady demolition along Seventh ensured that a good deal of it was gone before I was born in 1980, and almost all of it was gone before I was old enough to pay serious attention. Many of us watched in agony in 1997 as Mercantile Bank attacked one of its last survivors, the ornate Ambassador Building, to build a bland plaza that has become a driveway. Others may recall the earlier and still greater loss in this district in the early 1980’s, which shares some similarities with the Century Building demolition.

In the early 1980’s, St. Louis civic leaders lead by H. Edwin Trusheim promoted one of the worst designs ever to hit downtown: that of the “half-mall” completion of the Gateway Mall, that band of parkland stretching west between Market and Chestnut Streets from the Arch grounds to 22nd Street. This half-mall plan resulted not only in the destruction of one of the key blocks in the Seventh Street district but also in the construction of the horribly ugly Gateway One building right where older, more dignified buildings sat.

As in the case of the Century Building, civic leaders claimed—in the face of intense opposition from preservationists and the general public—that the demolition of significant historic office buildings actually helped save other buildings by making downtown as a whole more vital. Just like the Century Building demolition, this demolition led to the construction of an ugly structure that killed sidewalk life on its block. And, as with the Century Building case, the demolition did nothing to help revive downtown—it effected the reverse by destroying one of the most important architectural blocks and eliminating one of the last bits of vibrant street life south of Chestnut.

Back then, the victims were the stunning collection of buildings on the block bounded by Seventh and Eighth streets on the east and west and Market and Chestnut streets on the south and north, respectively. These were the 1898 Lincoln Trust (Title Guaranty) Building, by Eames and Young; the 1902 Missouri Pacific (Buder) Building, by William Swasey; and the 1906 Liggett (International) Building, also by Eames and Young. I won’t even get into the merits of these great buildings here. All three were gone by 1984.

Suffice to say, these buildings worked with each other and others—a few gone even before these—to form a harmonious and picturesque district of great office buildings centered around Louis Sullivan’s pioneering achievement, the 1891 Wainwright Building. These buildings expanded upon Sullivan’s ingenious triumph without overwhelming it. From the Buder Building at Seventh and Market up to the Ambassador Building at Seventh and Locust, this district’s buildings complimented each other through sophisticated variety of materials and colors, structural and stylistic experimentation and density of construction. This district served as a majestic corridor of commerce linking the northern downtown core, centered around the Old Post Office, with the southern Cupples Station warehouse district—which has been horribly devastated since the construction of Busch Stadium claimed half of the district and current “revitalization” plans have led to another demolition.

All that’s left today are the two downtown Sullivan buildings, the Wainright and the 1893 Union Trust Building at Seventh and Olive and two white terra cotta survivors also at Seventh and Olive, the looming 1914 Railway Exchange Building by Mauran, Russell and Garden, and the diminutive 1910 Louis Curtiss-designed Gill Building, which faces an uncertain future. That’s all. The fourth building at the corner of Seventh and Olive is a new, grossly overstated new parking garage that sits empty most of the time.

The Old Post Office district has not lost as many component buildings as the Seventh Street corridor. The fact that the Century Building was seriously considered for demolition in order to build an adjunct parking garage for another building is outrageous if one assumes that things are very good for downtown. If one instead assumes that downtown is caught in another speculation-driven bubble like the one that burst in the mid-1980s—not to mention the earlier bubble of the late 1960’s—the demolition makes sense. Recall that there was much talk about renovation and widespread support for preservation then, but stupid demolition decisions were still common.

One can also recall the 1998 demolition of the Marquette Building Annex on Broadway, which produced a bulky parking garage that stole sidewalk space and did nothing to further the renovation of the attached Marquette Building, which remains largely empty. This blunder pales in comparison to the Gateway Mall destruction, but serves as a direct and recent parable for the future of the Old Post Office project. The hype of the Marquette Garage’s saving power was totally false.

I’ll admit that the hype of the earlier waves of downtown reinvestment led to the renovation of many buildings, but only those deemed affordable to save. Many others were torn down, with horrible consequences. Somehow, the Old Post Office core made it out of the demolition spree to survive as the last place downtown where anyone could experience the elegant office building core as a living environment. Now, it becomes a memory—an abstract greatness that future generations may never believe existed.

Ironically, part of the earlier hype in downtown St. Louis was the renovation of the Old Post Office, reopened triumphantly in 1982. By 1996, the building’s doors were locked on weekends and the building fell into such disuse that less than 25 years after its grand re-opening it is once again the subject of redevelopment. This time, though, the Old Post Office will reopen slightly out of context and more than a little less elegant with a hulking concrete garage glaring from where solid Georgia marble once responded to the its ornate Second Empire lines. The old context—a relationship between buildings—will no longer exist in the same way as before.

Such beautiful contexts are the results of consistent accumulation of design choices. When planners make these choices carefully, districts like the Old Post Office core and the Seventh Street corridor emerge. When planners consistently make careless choices when altering existing districts, these districts become diminished over time until they become crude and disjointed collections of buildings. So goes downtown Saint Louis.

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown Salvage

Terror on Ninth Street

by Michael R. Allen

I visited Saint Louis last week, and spent some time in the Century Building. Yes, I was inside of the remains of the grandest marble building ever built. The experience was chilling, bizarre and intense. It would have been even more intense if I had made the visit with my colleague Claire Nowak-Boyd, but she had obligations that kept her home in Chicago while I went ahead with a truly terrible trip.

Last Wednesday morning, I was downtown in St. Louis, walking without an umbrella in the near-freezing rain to go to the Century. No one was there to let me in, so I wandered around and come back in an hour via MetroLink. As I ascended from the Eighth and Pine station, I heard a crack overhead and suddenly a light shower of glass mingled with the rain literally falling around me. I saw a set of vertical blinds flying in the strong wind many stories above. My first thought is that the workers at the Paul Brown Building had knocked their boom crane against the Arcade Building, causing a window to break. Then, a quick glance above revealed that a window had broken out in the Laclede Gas Building above.

A worker walking by turned to me and said, “That’s the problem with those windows. They don’t open and close, so they make a vacuum and the wind just sucks them out.”

Right on. Needless to say, the window now sports a plywood bandage.

I kept walking and, a few moments later, was inside of the fence at the Century Building, meeting up with salvager Larry Giles to get my hard hat. Then I went inside of the gruesome wreckage of the old gem. I watched as Larry and his two workers desparately began assembling bracing for the Ninth Street arch that he is trying to preserve in its entirety.

Water dripped consistently above the spot where Larry and his workers were working. The roof was removed weeks ago and there are some holes in the second floor due to the wrecking activities. Otherwise, the structure is fine even if slightly weakened. I believe that one could devise a workable plan to rebuild the building even in this late stage of demolition. The street frame with its exterior concrete piers is holding up well, as is the facade. Demolition of the corners has not damaged the intergrity of other spots in the building. Oh, well.

(The next day, another worker headed to the Board of Education Building rehab walks by and states to me that he thinks that the Century Building could be saved as-is if demolition stopped, and glass structures were built to encapsulate the corner areas and roof. Hmmm.)

At any rate, Larry informed me that the wrecking plan was altered to accomodate complaints from the Bell Lofts at Tenth and Olive; now, wrecking has to proceed from Locust to Olive, catching the arch in the middle. The original plan called for wrecking the corners first and then wrecking the building from the Syndicate Trust Building wall eastward toward the Ninth Street elevation. The arch would have been in the last area to be wrecked.

Hopefully, though, the salvage efforts will be completed without interference. Saving the entire arched entrance ornament system is a remarkable achievement that could only be bested by saving the entire building on-site.

Wednesday’s weather escalated into snow by mid-day, so the wreckers and Larry’s crew both stopped work after lunch.

When I returned to the site on Friday, the weather had improved and both operations were back in action, as they had been on Thanksgiving (hopefully Saint Louisans are thankful that Larry and his crew have been working seven days a week on this important and grueling task). I was able to take many good photographs that I will share on the EOA site later this week.

While the work was going on, I shuffled around the columns, open elevator shafts — some still framed with original Winslow Brothers cast iron framing — and piles of debris from the upper floors (the whole building is considerably smashed and somewhat unstable). The old Walgreens’ store space still sported macabre signs, one almost reading “BEAUTY” but missing some letters because the wall had been smashed out. The upper floors have been thoroughly gutted, but the ground floor’s shops paces are still full of furniture and a few old computers, buried under debris.

Being inside of the Century Building during demolition was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was plainly terrible to observe the signs of structural ingenuity exposed before destruction in addition to seeing the decorative beauty trampled. As the building continues to fall, more of the things that made it great are exposed in a grim irony.

As I said to Larry Giles while looking up through the archway at the Old Post Office as snow fell, this view never existed before and it’s beautiful as much as it is gruesome. But I never, ever wanted to even know that such a view existed.

Categories
Century Building Demolition Downtown

Demolition of the Century Building: One Month In

Photographs by Michael R. Allen