A ghost sign emerges from a blocked-in loading dock cavity at the alley side of the former Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney warehouse building at 917 Locust Street.
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Permit No Nuisance
Category: Downtown
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Neighborhood Gardens Memories
by Kathy Davis
The following comes from e-mail correspondence between the author and editor Michael Allen.
I grew up in the Neighborhood Gardens. My parents moved there in 1939. They raised three children there, including myself. We lived there until 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I have so many memories as I lived there the first eighteen years of my life. As a child I loved the pool and the courtyards. The south courtyard was where we played softball and football and the north courtyard was a basketball court. It also had great sidewalks for rollerskating.
The smell of honeysuckle was strong in the summer as there were a number of bushes throughout the complex. I was always told that there was almost every plant that was native to our state planted there. It was truly beautiful and well kept by the workmen. I remember three men who were maintenance. I went to school at St. Patrick’s grade school. I was baptized at St. Patrick’s Church and there is a picture of my family at the ground breaking of the new school in 1953. The Church was gone in 1969 or 70.
There was a Tom-Boy store on seventh street where we shopped and my brother worked as a bagger. There were also a cleaners, a tavern and an ice cream/confectionery. There were a few famous people who lived for a time at the apartments. William Inge was one.
I have many, many memories. There was nothing or nowhere prettier than there after a snowfall. There were so many trees that it was a wonderland.
I don’t remember it as a complex for low income. It was mostly single people or couples who worked downtown. Teachers and lawyers and women who worked for the phone company.Writers and artists also lived there. There were only about six kids by the time I came along. But we sure had fun.
This was a thriving neighborhood — very Italian, Catholic and strong. We used to have processions from St. Patrick’s to St. Joseph’s on Mayday. Seventh street had many markets like Tocco brothers, Valenti market where you could buy bags of olives and pumpkin seeds and just about everything. After Cochran was built there were many big families who moved in. I would go to sleep at night listening to groups of people singing across the street, as I lived at 1212 North 8th street.
We lived in a two bedroom on the first floor. No air, just window fans that my mother was very good at positioning so you got max air flow. The kitchens were small but efficient. The basements connected to other entrances and everyone would come down when it stormed. It could turn into quite the party for all the mothers with children. We all had our own locker areas to hang up laundry to dry.
Kids that went to St. Patrick’s grade school were very involved with St. Pat’s day. We performed for many priest in the area and we were the original Irish dance troop in the city. Our Troop leader was Connie O’Sullivan. He was quite the leader. Still to this day it’s like a national holiday to me.
Back to the apartments: We had a wading pool that had metal pipes at each end that made a fountain when turned on and we all swam many hots days away. Also there were two big sand boxes on each side of the pool with benches everywhere to sit and enjoy the tranquility of the courtyards. There were brick walls we would climb with statues on top. There were rails running around the grass areas we would walk on and see how far we could go before falling off. (They were two feet off the ground).
I would make out like a bandit on Halloween because there were not many kids that lived in the gardens — so I got spoiled.
My father was an iron worker and my mother a housewife. My sister and brother also graduated from St. Patrick’s and my brother was also married there.
I truly hope the renovations keep the spirit alive. To me it was home, to my family it was our little haven in the midst of a busy downtown district. You could walk downtown and shop and go to the show. You would walk and look at the Christmas displays in the windows of Famous-Barr and Scruggs, and Stix, Baer and Fuller (later Dillard’s). We watched the Arch being built — now that was something. We would skip church and walk downtown and hide out at Katz’ drugstore to get fries and a cherry coke. We would go to the Loew’s State theater on a Sunday. And watch every parade that went down Washington avenue.
Thank you for giving me a reason to reflect. I have truly enjoyed telling someone who holds an interest. It’s history and it’s my family’s life.
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10th and Locust
by Michael R. Allen
Here is the intersection of 10th and Locust streets in downtown St. Louis, with this view facing southwest. At left, one sees a massive cast-iron spandrel on the Syndicate Trust Building (built in 1906, designed by Harry Roach), which is being renovated into condominiums and apartments by LoftWorks and Sherman Associates. In the center, the art deco Civil Courts (built in 1930, designed by Klipstein and Rathmann) stands above the Thebes-Stierlin Music Store Building (built in 1906 and designed by Theodore Link, architect of Union Station). At the right is the 1899 Delany Building, designed by Matthews & Clark and rehabbed by LoftWorks in 2004. In 1953, the Delany Building was sold at a tax sale at the Civil Courts Building.
by Michael R. Allen
The interior of the Dorsa Building (1946) is a cavernous modern wonderland. There are few right angles in the space that Meyer Loomstein designed as the showroom for the Dorsa dress line. On the first level, the space is divided into two portions: a front lobby, accessible from Washington, with a large central open area flanked by offices that open to it. Through an opening at the rear wall of this space, one enters a fantastic auditorium consisting of terraced seating descending along with a curving staircase that leads down to a small stage. Curves are everywhere — in walls, the taper of columns, ceiling insets and in the shape of the stage itself. Plaster on metal lathe is the basic material used to mold the streamline spaces here. Terrazzo floors and stylized doors heighten the appearance. Color once was essential to the presentation of the space, but later alterations not doubt altered the original palette.
The auditorium was used for fashion shows for many years. The Dorsa company unveiled its new lines here, and also turned over the space to student designers from Washington University.
Alas, there is no definite future for the space even though the building is being renovated by the Pyramid Companies. Pyramid is leasing the space to a commercial tenant, and favors preservation. However, ultimately the choice to preserve the space will be passed to whomever leases this space.
Needless to say, the space is the only large-scale intact Art Moderne interior in downtown St. Louis, and one of a handful ever created there. Its preservation would guarantee that the city would retain a space like no other. The uncertainty points the need for redefining local, state and national preservation standards to give architectural interiors protection equal to that of exteriors.
We thank Paul Hohmann of Pyramid Architects for giving us a tour of the interior.
After passing through the street lobby, one enters a show room flanked by offices. Tapered plasterwork hide the building’s original columns.
Inside of the show room, the curvaceous entrance to the theater beckons.
Arriving at the top of the theater, one is face with an asymmetrical array of curves and a double-back progression to the lowest level.
Wedge-shaped mirrors in stylized frames — replete with coquillage at the center top –adorn the walls. The stage is no simple platform, but a continues to make use of wide parabolic and circular curves.
The columns in the theater have cloud-like plaster capitals, and the ceiling repeats the motif with recesses. Once you enter, you pass to the land of dreams — and dresses!
Every detail seems to be considered by the architect. Even the the view lines between these columns, once governed by a grid, serve as an axis for a Rorschach-like scene.
by Michael R. Allen
Progress on the century Building Memorial Parking Garage has been slow, although parts of it have reached a height above the Century Building’s roof. This photograph from June 2006, looking northwest from the corner of Olive and Ninth, makes one wonder why the garage project is taking so long. The view also shows how the choice of pigment for the cast concrete cladding may not have been the best, to say the least.
The post-modern hulk slowly rises.
by Michael R. Allen
Nearly half a year after Gallery Urbis Orbis closed, its storefront space at 419 N. 10th Street in downtown St. Louis in finally going commercial again. This week, workers wrapped the windows in paper and banners marking the relocation of the Casa Semplice store to this space.
Some people may recall when this space was the front end of a large, cavernous used office furniture and equipment store. I remember looking for a desk there. This store operated there for over a decade until developer Craig Heller purchased the building in 1998. Urbis Orbis opened its doors there in late 2003 and brought art and civics to the storefront until December 31, 2005. After the departure of the gallery, the space gave life to art for several temporary exhibits. Kudos to Craig Heller for being willing to let the space drag out its non-profit days.
by Michael R. Allen
A few days ago while walking downtown in the afternoon, I had one of those moments that are somewhat unnerving. The weather conditions were already bleak, with a slight drizzle and a stone-gray sky overhead. I came upon the intersection of Sixth and Locust and stood at the corner, amazed at what I saw: no movement, amplified by somewhat-dismal surroundings. I looked north up Sixth Street and saw neither a person nor a vehicle. I looked behind me, west on locust, and saw no one. I looked ahead east on Locust, and the street and sidewalks were also empty. Finally, I looked south down Seventh and saw a person standing at the intersection of Seventh and Olive. Still, I had not had such a moment downtown around the middle of a weekday in a few years.
Then again, at this intersection, such an experience is not too strange. At the northwest corner is the dingy hulk of St. Louis Centre; at the southwest is the huge Railway Exchange Building with many of its lower level windows tinted and internally covered for the Famous-Barr store (I hear that Macy’s will reopen these windows); at the southeast corner is the group of buildings that once housed the Mercantile Library, built in the 1880s, clad in cast concrete in the 1950s and abandoned in the 2000s; and, at the northeast corner is the most lifeless structure at the intersection: a parking garage that once had a first-floor Woolworth’s but now as first-floor parking. The parking garage is made more ugly by the way in which its owners converted the store space to parking. They simply removed the plate glass windows of the store, leaving the metal encasements to frame open views of parked cars inside a dark, deep space.
At any rate, this intersection is one of the remaining spots where downtown’s renaissance looks doubtful even on a workday. However, all of the problems here are the buildings that compose the intersection and their conditions, and some of this will change soon: St. Louis Centre will close in June, with skybridge demolition in January and February next year before rehabilitation begins; Macy’s parent company Federated will be making some improvements to the lower floors of the Railway Exchange Building, even as they stamp out a store name that was the last bedrock of local retail (something that Federated is doing to Chicago, too); and the Pyramid Companies own the Mercantile Library buildings and have banners tacked on them advertising available office space. The one question is what will become of the parking garage, built for and joined to St. Louis Centre.
Why not tear it down? Like St. Louis Centre, it was built over the sidewalk, limiting the possibility for re-introducing retail on the first floor. Extending sidewalks and enclosing the ground-floor’s dark arcades is nearly impossible with Locust and Sixth very narrow here anyway. I suppose the garage could be cut back on its perimeter, but that seems too complicated to be economically viable. After St. Louis Centre is reworked, perhaps the garage site will be an attractive location for a new downtown high-rise.
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Around the Old Post Office
by Michael R. Allen
According to Martin Van Der Werf’s column in today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, plans for the park just north of the Old Post Office on Locust Street are stalled to point of finally frustrating developers and Downtown Now! topper Tom Reeves. Perhaps the inability to put in this useless park will convince people that this site is ideal for high-density development, not a stale piece of green space. The Old Post Office is surrounded by dense architectural fabric on its east and south sides, and by a huge parking garage on its west. Why not mitigate the parking garage’s ugliness and complement the remaining architectural fabric by developing this site with tall modern buildings?
The Roberts brothers want to build a glassy tower addition to the Mayfair. They could push it up to Locust, providing a lower connecting portion between the Mayfair and the new building that would make for a more pleasant transition. Another developer could acquire and build upon the western end of the site. Why squander the opportunity? Downtown has far too much open space, and needs greater density.
UPDATE: From a thread on the Urban St. Louis forum: “They should develop the plot of land the park will be on and build an underground plaza, beneath the parking garage.”
by Michael R. Allen
Local artist Lyndsey Scott has of late been painting in a certain gallery window on 10th Street downtown. I am glad to see that local legacy of Alan Brunettin lives on, at least for a little while longer. (Brunettin himself can be found in some Illinois city on Lake Michigan, albeit without storefront exposure.) If only some wealthy urbanist would bankroll anyone who wanted to stand in a downtown window and make art to delight the occasional observant passer-by…
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Scrappin’ on Locust
by Michael R. Allen
Several days a week, pedestrians on Locust Street will see a battered red GMC pick-up truck of a late 1960s or early 1970s vintage with its bed overfilled with scrap metal. The truck is parked outside of the Old Post Office, and its driver is a scrapper with great tenacity. He will go through the considerable debris created by various projects at the Old Post Office, which have gotten few and far between since the formal opening on the Ides of March. There is some metal coming from the ongoing construction of the Century Building’s tombstone, though, and with the mishaps and delays plaguing that project, the metal will be coming for awhile.
The scrappy scrapper is friendly and energetic — and motivated, since this work is the only job he holds at the moment. Thankfully, the construction workers and guards at the Old Post Office never interfere with his pursuit of enough money to buy a few meals. In fact, the workers frequently separate metal and give it directly to him.