Category: Demolition

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Abandonment Demolition Fairground LRA North St. Louis

How Easy Death, How Easy Life

by Michael R. Allen

The house at 3839 Lee Avenue as it looked this afternoon.

This unusual cross-gabled house with striking dormers, located at 3839 Lee Avenue in the Fairground neighborhood, is about to be demolished. Once it is gone, an irreplaceable building — seriously, what else looks like this in the entire city? — will be lost and a predictable death pattern will conclude. Fairground and the Third Ward will lose yet another building that could house people, maintain surrounding property values and generate city revenues.

This particular house was first noted as vacant by the Building Division in 1989. The house returned to that status in 1998, and never was occupied again. The downward spiral is evident in the collapsed gable end and mess of bricks below, but also in the ownership. In 2001, after owner Albert Martin defaulted on real property taxes, the house was auctioned by the Sheriff. No one bid. The house reverted to the city’s Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), which did little except keep the plywood boards on. LRA’s lack of enterprise is somewhat understandable given the house’s condition at acceptance. On February 24, 2000, the Building Commissioner condemned the house for demolition. (Even a preservationist is baffled at how long it has taken to get this one down.)

The odd little house on Lee Avenue’s tale is not exceptional, although it should be. A negligent owner let the building fall into disrepair, stops paying taxes, lets it get condemned and then lets it lapse to city ownership. The city lacked the means to reverse long-term decay, and did no marketing of the house. By the time the wrecker put his sign in the front lawn, the story was written and only needed the detail of when demolition would start.

However, this easy and certain death could just as well have been an easy and certain rebirth. The Assessor’s Office shows that the assessed value of land and improvements at 3839 Lee Avenue were a mere $670 in 2000. Again, this is not exceptional. Many houses like this one across the city — but especially in north St. Louis — go to tax sale with low assessments and low tax liens. The economics of preservation of many of these buildings are pretty favorable to a buyer.

Where are the buyers? There are few smart people starting to use the tax auctions for preservation. For instance, artist Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation has purchased at least one Hyde Park building at tax auction for rehabilitation projects. With a plentiful supply of great buildings, many of which could be eligible for historic tax credits, and few competing bidders, there seems to be a hidden buyers’ market in this city. Hidden for long, however, and we could lose quite a bit of St. Louis.

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Agriculture Demolition Hyde Park North St. Louis

Turnverein Site Empty For First Time Since 1870

by Michael R. Allen

The former front of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein along Salisbury Avenue.

Architectural historians often stop their work when a building reaches its sure death. Without a chance at preservation, an already-decrepit building is just a historic shell. Articles written, consulting fees paid, photos taken — what is left to do? Plenty. As a building is lost through neglect and later demolition, its body is battered until a flood of historic memory is released. Perhaps a vacant building means even more to a community during its demolition. The cleared site serves as an empty signifier — signifying many things to many people. One of those things may actually get built.

So the Nord St. Louis Turnverein’s rapid demolition last week under the capable hands of Z & L Wrecking was an instructive moment in local architectural history. The rapidity of demolition, the cleaning of brick and the removal of all complete traces of building in one week is an accomplishment unmatched in execution and intensity by the work of any architect or builder.

Looking across site toward 20th Street.

In just one week, Z & L Wrecking removed a building that had occupied the site starting in 1870. The northern half of the site had not been unbuilt for 141 years. The southern half across the alley had been the site of a building for 113 years. The rapid liquidation of so much material and civic memory was a quiet symphony of demolition, or perhaps an unrecorded dirge.

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Demolition Hyde Park North St. Louis

Nord St. Louis Turnverein Almost Gone

Here’s the view looking southwest from 20th and Salisbury today. The north and south gymnasiums of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein are down to the foundation walls, with only the center section that bridges the alley still standing tall.

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Demolition Hyde Park North St. Louis

Demolition Finally Comes to the Nord St. Louis Turnverein

by Michael R. Allen

Looking southeast from 20th and Salisbury.

Yesterday a crew from Z & L Wrecking started taking down the ruinous northern portion of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein. This was deja vu to those who recalled the day when Z & L arrived to take down the buildings after the devastating fire on July 6, 2006 that destroyed the northern section. This time, the failing structural state led to the Building Division’s issuance of an emergency demolition permit on March 29, 2011.

The same view nearly five years ago in February 2006.

Developer Peter George stopped demolition and valiantly tried to find financing to rebuild the Hyde Park landmark. With the southern gymnasium addition of 1898 largely intact, rebuilding seemed like a reasonable path. Five years later, an imbalance of time and money has led to a more conservative approach.  George came along late in the life of the building, purchasing it after the fire.

The remaining section of the front elevation.

The fateful decisions came earlier when the remaining Turners rejected the membership applications of a contingent of new members (including many leaders of Metropolis) in 1999, and when the group sold the buildings to a future felon named Doug Hartmann in 2004. Even before the fire on July 5, 2006, heavy winds had destroyed the roof of the older north building on April 2, 2006. The loss of a building can take time, and the loss of a community anchor can tragically drag out for years.

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Abandonment Demolition Fairground O'Fallon

Six Years Pass on Warne Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

The row of houses in March 2005.

When I first photographed these six vacant buildings in the 4200 block of Warne in the Fairground neighborhood in March 2005, I was struck by what a statement they made as a row. Besides the four-flat shown at left, the rest of the group consisted of St. Louis’ bread-and-butter building, the two-flat. The variety of styles in the group could very well have been a textbook illustration of St. Louis’ streetcar-fueled late 19th and early 20th century neighborhood development.  Instead, in abandonment, the row served as a different, disturbing illustration.

The block in August 2009.

By August 2009, the four-family building was demolished. An amazing apartment building across the street was also gone. The rest of the row was in bad shape, although each building was structurally sound. I confess to having low hopes for the group. Located in the city’s Third Ward, the five remaining buildings were owned by the Land Reutilization Authority and outside of any historic district. Had these buildings been inside of a historic district, they would have made a great historic tax credit project for a community development corporation.

The row in March 2011.

In the last three weeks, the row has finally disappeared. These buildings were on the edge of Fairground, located across the street from the O’Fallon neighborhood. Their loss is felt strongest in the O’Fallon neighborhood, where a historic district nomination is underway, by dissolving a visual edge.

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Demolition Midtown

SLU Removes Another Locust Street Building

by Michael R. Allen

Perhaps it comes as little surprise that St. Louis University has now demolished the vacant building at 3227 Locust Street that it owned at the northeast corner of Locust and Leonard streets on Automobile Row in Midtown. After all, the hole in the roof of the one-story corner building had grown so large that Google’s satellite images made the damage clear. Residents of the loft units across the street had an ever closer, and more graphic, view.

Looking inside of 3227 Locust Street through the front door's window, July 2010.

The hole in the roof is now a hole in the street wall at a corner intersection. Contrast the appearance of the corner in July 2010 with the appearance today:

While undistinguished architecturally, the building defined a cross-street intersection and provided continuity between the more developed blocks of Locust east of Compton and the emerging development around the Moto Museum to the west. The visual gap between these two areas has grown, at a time when even the university had embraced rehabilitation of other buildings it owns on the block to the west. This lost building had a solid masonry body and needed only a new roof. It was a sturdy shell that could have been a turnkey retail or restaurant project. Now the corner development entails new construction, ratcheting the cost of making something happen there higher than the reach of post-bubble developers.


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A look at the map makes the impact of what otherwise might seem to be an insignificant building clear.

To the west, a parking lot and another corner building.

To the west of the building already was a parking lot, which could have provided interim parking for any user of the corner building. How likely is infill of this block within the next five years? How much more likely was reuse of the building at 3227 Locust Street?

Across the street at 3224 Locust Street is the recently-rehabilitated Cadillac Building (1919; William A. Balch, architect)

    Amid the ebbs and flows of Locust Street’s emerging new life, there have been some amazing successes — the Automobile Row historic district designation, the new SLU-backed hotel project — as well as avoidable mistakes — the livery stable fiasco, the closure of Josephine Baker Avenue. This small demolition suggests that the area would benefit from demolition review, which it currently lacks. Most of the Locust Street business district is in the 19th ward, which is one of a handful of city wards whose aldermen opted not to have demolition review when the city passed its latest preservation ordinance in 1999. With so much vacant land whose fate is key to maintaining the urban character, a zoning overlay and local historic district ordinances could also be appropriate.

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Benton Park West Demolition LRA South St. Louis

Iowa Avenue House’s Days Are Numbered

by Michael R. Allen

Last year, the Community Development Administration issued a “last chance” call for a proposal to rehabilitate the vacant house at 3244 Iowa Avenue in Benton Park West, owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. (See “Last Chance for 3244 Iowa Street” from May 9, 2010.) A few weeks later, Landmarks Association of St. Louis placed the beleaguered building in its annual Most Endangered Places list.

The house at 3244 Iowa Avenue as it was in early May 2010.

Yet no one took the last chance, and January 12 the city applied for a demolition permit for the small house. Since the house is a contributing resource to the Gravois-Jefferson Historic Streetcar Suburb District, the permit will require approval from the Cultural Resources Office.

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Demolition Downtown PRO Collection

Live Better Electrically

by Michael R. Allen

One of the photographs in our recent acquisition of over 200 amateur photographs of St. Louis shows the Union Electric Building at 315 N. 12th Street (now Tucker Boulevard) decked out with holiday decorations. The photograph is undated but comes from the middle or later 1950s. There was plenty to see the rest of the year

In the 1950s, Union Electric’s headquarters was decorated year-round with an impressive neon-tube sign mounted on a rooftop structure. By 1953, Union Electric had purchased the adjacent St. Louis Star-Times building to the south. The image above comes from the Summer 1953 issue of Union Electric Quarterly and shows the sign atop the Star-Times building.

Both the St. Louis Star-Times and Union Electric buildings were demolished in the early 1980s and the site (on the same block as Christ Church Cathedral) is now occupied by a tiny U.S. Bank branch building and more asphalt. There are no illuminated holiday decorations, no neon signs and no sign that great buildings ever occupied the site.

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Demolition Forest Park Southeast Preservation Board

Preservation Board Considering Demolitions on Arco

by Michael R. Allen

Tomorrow the St. Louis Preservation Board will consider the demolition of four houses on Arco Avenue, located at 4217, 4221, 4223 and 4225 Arco Avenue. The owner and applicant is Restoration St. Louis, a company whose commitment to historic preservation is strong and well-known. The Cultural Resources Office recommends that the Preservation Board allow demolition of the damaged houses at 4223 and 4225 Arco but deny demolition of the other two, which despite decay are sound.

All are contributing resources to the Forest Park Southeast Historic District, which is why their demolition can go before the Preservation Board. I made the following video of the current condition:

Alex Ihnen posted an article on these houses on urbanSTL, and in an update stated that he feels they are “goners.” The Forest Park Southeast neighborhood association has endorsed demolition of all of the houses. Yet the Cultural Resources Office’s professional staff thinks that the eastern two are not, which is a reasonable assertion. Tomorrow’s Preservation Board meeting — held at 4:00 p.m. in the 12th floor conference room at 1015 Locust Street — should be interesting.

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Demolition Gate District Historic Preservation South St. Louis

Two for One on Lafayette Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

In September, I wrote about the storm-damaged collapsing eastern house in a row of three historic houses on the 2800 block of Lafayette Avenue (see “Rowhouse on Lafayette Avenue Slated for Demolition”, September 10). The Building Division quickly condemned for demolition the 19th century house as an emergency public safety hazard, and demolition commenced last month.

The result shows the pitfalls of our current policy for abandoned buildings.

There is no mistake that the wreckers hired by the Building Division did their job, but that job itself is not all that needed to be done. What is left behind by the crew an adjacent row house now weakened to a point where it too may start suffering structural problems.  The first problem is that the side wall, of soft brick never meant to be exposed to weather, is now uncovered.

On the front elevation, as I predicted, the wreckers could not easily deal with the fact that the front wall of the row was laid as a continuous bond with no easy seams. The wrecking job led to loss of face brick and of part of the wooden cornice of the neighboring house. The loss of the cornice is inexcusable since a simple straight saw cut could have been used.

Again, I am not insinuating that the wreckers did anything wrong. Trouble is, they did what the city hired them to do. The city did not hire them to make sure the neighboring building was stabilized, or to do anything beyond removing 2804 Lafayette Avenue.

That task seems particularly short-sighted when one views the newly-exposed east elevation to find a gaping hole in the foundation wall.  I have no clue how this hole was created, but I do know that it leaves wooden joists unsupported.  Without support, those joists will eventually fall, and pull the walls downward with them.  This hole should be patched in with masonry of either stone or concrete masonry units, but if anyone complains the most likely result will be that a city crew will cover it with plywood.

Clearly, the Building Division’s demolition policy leaves unresolved issues when one building in a row — and despite perceptions there are many row houses in the city — gets wrecked but the row stands. The neighboring house now has been destabilized and joist collapse, front wall spalling and other maladies will set in. Hopefully if it gets demolished, the occupied house next door will be protected from careless damage.

Photograph by Jane Porter of Landmarks Association of St. Louis from the National Register nomination of the Barr Branch Library Historic District, 1981.

Before the demolition, the potential of this fine row of houses on Lafayette reminded me of another row, also on the south side of Lafayette between Jefferson and Compton avenues. The photograph of Barr’s Block above shows its deteriorated condition in 1981. The seven-house row built in 1875 by merchant William Barr (of Famous-Barr fame) was in dire condition when it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Barr Branch Library Historic District in 1982. That designation made the row eligible for the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit and led to the row’s rehabilitation.  (One building was later demolished.)

Today Barr’s Block has been rehabilitated again, reverting to town houses from its previous incarnation as rental housing. While Lafayette Avenue in the Gate District may have lost building density and be marred by much vacant land, there remain many historic buildings and the potential for urban infill. The location is amazing. Why the row to the west — not part of any historic district — has been left to die is incomprehensible.