Categories
Downtown I-70 Removal

Forget the Lid — Let’s Go Under I-70

by Michael R. Allen

View south from Cole Street, looking under I-70's elevated section.

For the past tow years, the citizen group City to River has pushed for removal of I-70 through downtown St. Louis in order to better improve the connections between the city’s core and the riverfront around the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. City to River’s practical and relatively affordable proposal is replacement of I-70 with an at-grade boulevard after the new Mississippi River Bridge opens in 2014. Then, I-70 will be carried away from the unsightly depressed and elevated lanes, which will get an inferior designation.

The boulevard plan won traction when the National Park Service’s General Management Plan for the Memorial included a very favorable mention of the boulevard idea. Then during the Framing a Modern Masterpiece competition, all five finalists ended up endorsing the proposal, with several explicitly drawing their own phased boulevard plans in their final competition proposals. Then the momentum came to a halt when the winner, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, got to work on creating a workable design. When that plan was unveiled on January 26 this year, the boulevard was nowhere to be found. City to River took a conciliatory tone, suggesting consensus that the boulevard was no longer a short-term goal for anyone.

Amid the reality that this city will be saddled with the ungainly mess of interstate that mars many a sight line downtown, yesterday City to River tweeted an idea that could make life with the highway a little less depressing.

Here’s the short story from Dezeen: A group in London called Assemle has built a cinema underneath a wharfside elevated highway (called a “flyover” in England). The project is called “Folly For Flyover” and lasts six weeks. The cinema’s entrance is made of reclaimed local brick supported by scaffolding in the shape of a historic row house. According to Dezeen: “Folly for a Flyover was assembled by a team of volunteers over the course of a month, using reclaimed and donated materials.”

Some efforts have been made to "beautify" the area under the elevated lanes.

The architectural pun is clear and lovely: elevated highway construction took down many a historic building in previous decades, and demolition continues today (hence the available brick). Activating the otherwise-bleak space under the highway offers both a way to mitigate its dehumanizing form and the occasion to do a little teaching about the scale of materials and the impact of highways on cities.

View east along Washington Avenue toward Laclede's Landing.

Can St. Louis try something similar? At present, even the three-block highway lid — which does nothing to offset the tragic landscape of the elevated lanes — included in Van Valkenburgh’s final plan will take years to build. Some temporary programming in our cavernous under-highway spaces downtown would make what could be a long wait for any changes to I-70 easier to bear.

The elevated structure itself is not the worst architecture in St. Louis, either. It is a utilitarian work of steel and concrete — there’s untapped visual potential that we should harness as long as it stands.

Categories
Central West End Downtown Mid-Century Modern Midtown Motels North St. Louis South St. Louis

Motels in the City of St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

A version of this article first appeared in the Winter 2009 NewsLetter of the St. Louis Chapter of the Society Architectural Historians.

There is ample recognition of the significance of mid-century motels along roadsides across America, where motels used colorful signage and design to beckon to weary Americans enjoying their automotive freedom. Perhaps because of nostalgic idealization of the motor court and the “open road” and perhaps because of the stigma that postwar urban renewal efforts have attained, local history overlooks the significant wave of urban motel construction that took place in St. Louis between 1958 and 1970.

Advertisement for the Bel Air Motel. Note that the front wing does not yet have the third story addition.

The 1958 opening of the Bel Air Motel on Lindell Boulevard renewed the building of lodging in the City of St. Louis while introducing a hotel form new to the city, the motel. St. Louis’ last new hotel before that was the nearby Park Plaza Hotel (1930), a soaring, elegant Art Deco tower built on the cusp of the Great Depression. However, another hotel built before the Depression was more indicative of future trends than the Park Plaza. In 1928, Texas developer and automobile travel enthusiast Percy Tyrell opened the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 205 N. 18th Street in downtown St. Louis (listed in the National Register on February 7, 2007), designed by Kansas City architect Alonzo Gentry. While the 14-story Renaissance Revival hotel was stylistically similar to contemporary hotels, it introduced the chain economy hotel to St. Louis.

Categories
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.

Categories
Downtown

Railway Exchange Building Idea Bounce

From RCGA:

The St Louis design community has a unique opportunity to brainstorm and collaborate. Macy’s downtown location is downsizing its footprint in the Railway Exchange Building, the 1,000,000 square foot former HQ for May Co./Famous Barr. Current owners RKMerlyn Development and Bruce Development are seeking ideas to develop several floors of the building, a space of 100,000 square feet! St Louis has a rich history in creative entrepreneurship, and we are seeking ideas on how this space may be utilized to create a dynamic, collaborative incubator for design ideas. The core may be an incubator for fashion designers, but who do you think could be included in that space to create a rich environment of creativity and collaboration?

The RCGA and Partnership for Downtown will host an “open house” in the space on Wednesday, December 1, from 5 – 8PM so you can get a feel for the history and possibilities of the space. Then on Wednesday, December 8, the Skandalaris Center will host a “Design in St Louis” IdeaBounce®. We invite you to post ideas for the space on www.ideabounce.com. When you do, check off “Design Entrepreneurship” in the industry box, and we will invite you to bounce your idea on December 8. All are welcome to both the open house and IdeaBounce®. On December 8 we will include an “open mic” period for people who may not have posted their idea on www.ideabounce.com, but we encourage you to post to start to connect with the innovators and entrepreneurs who can help you get started.

No need to register for the Open House on December 1, but please do register for the December 8 IdeaBounce® at http://www.ideabounce.com/contact/events.php.

Categories
Demolition Downtown Terra Cotta

Locust Street Breathes Again

by Michael R. Allen

Our landmark Railway Exchange Building, home of Macy’s Department Store, breathed a sigh of relief last week as the last bit of the monstrous St. Louis Centre sky bridge over Locust Street came down. The wide, tall bridge connected the second through fifth floors of the department store space to the mall, and blocked views of the building’s north elevation.

Completed in 1913 and designed by Mauran, Russell & Crowell, the Railway Exchange occupies the entire city block between Olive, 6th, Locust and 7th streets. The 21-story mass is adorned with 183,000 white-glazed terra cotta tiles by St. Louis’ Winkle Terra Cotta Company. The tiles display a wealth of original work and Italian Renaissance-derived patterns. For the past 25 years, only three sides of the building have been fully displayed.

Removal shows that the sky bridge construction in 1984-1985 did entail grinding away of the faces of many tiles, but the damage is not as extensive as it could have been. Most of the area was simply coated with fire-proofing spray.

As with the former Stix-Baer and Fuller department store building to the south (coincidentally designed by the same firm), some replication of terra cotta is ahead. The Railway Exchange’s north elevation will again shine, perhaps with a substitute material (hopefully not a plastic-based one!) or perhaps with the real thing. Recent replacement work on the Orpheum Theater used actual new clay terra cotta pieces. Terra cotta is still manufactured in Italy, but there may be fewer than a half-dozen American makers. When the Railway Exchange was built, there were many makers domestically but none finer than our own Winkle Company.

The Railway Exchange has repair work ahead, but already Locust Street is a restored place. With both of St. Louis Centre’s sky bridges demolished, we have reversed one of the worst atrocities of the 1980’s urban renewal era in St. Louis. At an event Sunday, someone asked me if the Gateway One of the Mall building’s demolition could be far behind.

I won’t bet on that event happening soon, and I would certainly prioritize projects that reclaim the public space of the street eroded in the post-modern era.  (Also, with the mass of the bridge gone, the loss of density through demolition on Locust between 7th and 9th is terribly evident.)  The sky bridges may not have precluded pedestrian and vehicle passage, but they cast a psychological shadow that devastated the east end of downtown.  No more.

Categories
Clearance Downtown Mill Creek Valley PRO Collection

Parade in a Lost Neighborhood

This parade shot was taken just west of Aloe Plaza near 21st and Market streets. The view is looking east toward the Civil Courts Building (at right in the background), and shows some of the Mill Creek Valley commercial district on Market Street.  The parade’s forward march follows the path of clearance that totally eradicated the African-American enclave around Union Station between 1928 and 1960.

Given the photographer’s other subjects, the date is likely after 1940.

From the Preservation Research Office Collection.

Categories
Downtown Louis Sullivan

The Good Fortune of the Chemical Building

by Michael R. Allen

The Chemical Building in 2005.

Today’s news that the owners of the venerable Chemical Building at 8th and Olive streets have filed bankruptcy bring uncertainty to the future of their redevelopment plan. The welcome prospect that the name might not change to “Alexa” aside, the turn toward bankruptcy has some tongues wagging that downtown will have two big vacant buildings at the intersection for a long time. Diagonally across the intersection is the Arcade Building, now owned by a city agency after the Pyramid Companies declared bankruptcy and the building went to foreclosure auction.

Whether the molasses-slow market can absorb so much square footage of adaptively reused space is unknown. What is known is that taking a fully-occupied building like the Chemical and dumping all tenants before full financing is ready for rehabilitation is not a good idea (see also: Jefferson Arms). Had the developers waited, they might be waiting out the recession with a highly desirable low-rent refuge for small businesses.

The Union Trust Building today.

No matter — the Chemical Building has an architectural history trump card that guarantees all is not lost. See, the as-built Chemical Building design by Boston-born Henry Ives Cobb triumphed over one by Chicago wunderkind Louis Sullivan. St. Louis was a remarkably receptive place for Louis Sullivan’s art, and the 700 block of Olive Street could have had side-by-side Sullivan. The Union Trust Building at 705 Olive had been completed in 1893, and its stunning round windows, exposed light well, terra cotta lions and monochromatic buff brick and terra cotta shaft all proudly brought Sullivan’s revolution to town. (The Wainwright Building of 1891 was no small achievement, but the local press took greater notice of the Union Trust.)

Two plans for the Chemical Building by Louis Sullivan, exhibited at the Third Annual Exposition of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1895.

The Chemical National Bank planned a complementary, modern office building adjacent to the Union Trust. In 1894, the bank solicited the two proposals by Sullivan shown above. The difference between the two possible plans is primarily height; the gridded bodies are otherwise almost identical.  With wide double windows, large round windows at the attic and a large overhanging cornice, the proposed buildings would have been very striking for both the time and place.  However, their form certainly would have paled in comparison to the sheer genius of the Union Trust.  Sullivan may have wished to touch his masterpiece with a gentler neighbor.

Instead of a gentle lesser work by Sullivan, the Chemical National Bank directors chose a rather bold 17-story design by Cobb.  Cobb’s plan originally fronted only four bays on 8th Street, and was extended by five bays in 1903 from near-seamless plans by Mauran, Russell & Garden. Cobb’s building had a rather old-fashioned two-story cast iron base by Christopher & Simpson that was heavily ornamented in classically-derived foliated patterns.  However, the upper floors were built out in a monotone of brick and Winkle terra cotta.  The projecting trapezoidal bays, including a dramatic chamfered corner bay, emphasized the building’s height as much as the Union Trust’s piers.  Yet the horizontal band courses dampened the effect of the bays, and the fenestration between the projecting bays was far from expressive of the building’s structural grid.  The top two floors were clad in ornamented terra cotta.

Cobb tried to marry the Chicago School skyscraper with the nobility of traditional masonry ornament, and the result was panned in 1896 upon completion of the Chemical Building.  With Sullivan looming next door, comparison was inevitable — and unfavorable.  In 1896, an anonymous correspondent wrote in The Brickbuilder of the architect’s effort to express the Chemical Building: “He has left no quiet spot upon which we may rest the eye, and, although we may be awed by its great height, it lacks the simplicity and imposing grandeur of its neighbor, the Union Trust Building.”


The Chemical Building and the Union Trust Building, monochromatic neighbors from the 1890s.

Today, that assessment of the Chemical Building seems hasty. While Cobb’s work largely exhibits few progressive tendencies in an age of innovation — although it includes Chicago’s elegant Newberry Library (1893) — the Chemical Building is the architect’s strongest commercial design. The reference to Chicago’s long lost Tacoma Building by Holabird & Roche (1886-9) is obvious, but not the source of the Chemical Building’s design inspiration. Cobb could easily have mimicked Sullivan or other better-regarded luminaries of the Chicago School, but he chose instead to offer his own vision.

The Chemical Building’s red monotone is impressive and striking, and draws the eye toward itself with as much force as the Union trust or Wainwright. The Chemical Building is a fitting neighbor to the mighty Union Trust, and holds its own with a rather different statement about the tall building’s artistic potential. Together, the two buildings in their contrasting tones show us a full range of architectural imagination in the late 19th century. The Chemical Building’s horizons contrast effectively with the Union Trust’s swaggering vertical elements, reminding us that a tall office building is also a stack of floors where people work.

One without the other would be an incomplete range and, had the Chemical National Bank chose Sullivan to complete the block face to his measure, two of the same would not so powerfully urge the eye to fix on two powerful, beautiful masses. There is no doubt that the Chemical Building has good fortune on its side.

Categories
Demolition Downtown

Good Riddance, Locust Street Sky Bridge

by Michael R. Allen

This video — I apologize for the shakiness — captures what I hope is my last walk under the Locust Street sky bridge at St. Louis Centre. I can think of no place downtown that fills me with greater dread, and I am anticipating the demolition of the bridge here more than the bridge over Washington. While the Washington bridge blocked the more prominent and cohesive view, it also crossed a street with enough existing pedestrian traffic to absorb some of its ill effects. The Locust bridge may well have been a wall to grade level for its chilling effect on downtown. With the Railway Exchange Building sale closed, the demolition of this bridge is now ready to go.

Of course, the shift in obscenities from an enclosed downtown mall to a parking garage is a downward fall. Any grace in the loss of the sky bridges is at least partly mitigated by the unimaginative new use of St. Louis Centre. I know it took some imagination for the city to extricate itself from the Pyramid’s tax increment financing program for the One City Center tower, a truly atrocious deal, but better solutions may have been at hand. What’s done is done, and with the heavy, ugly bridges both gone, downtown will be much improved. A garage at the mall can — and should — be undone.

Categories
Downtown East St. Louis, Illinois Green Space JNEM

PRO Proud to Serve on the SOM/Hargreaves/BIG Team

Renderings from the SOM/Hargreaves/BIG submission in The City + The Arch + The River 2015 design competition.

The Preservation Research Office is proud to be a part of the SOM/Hargreaves/BIG team in The City + The Arch + The River 2015 design competition, and urge readers of this blog to examine our team’s proposal as well as those of the other teams. PRO Director Michael Allen provided architectural history and research for the SOM/Hargreaves/BIG team as well as cultural resource management suggestions. The experience has been exciting and rewarding, and PRO commends its fellow team members for many hours of hard work and amazing creativity.

We recommend taking the team to at least skim the narrative statements on the competition website, because the boards only hint at the full scope of all of the submissions.

Categories
Downtown

Deadline for City’s Arcade Building RFP is September 30

On July 28, the Land Clearance and Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) of the City of St. Louis issued an Request for Proposals for the historic Arcade Building at 812 Olive Street in downtown St. Louis. After a previous rehabilitation project undertaken by the Pyramid Companies collapsed, the Arcade Building ended up at foreclosure auction in April 2010. Environmental Operations Incorporated placed the winning bid, and sold the Arcade to LCRA for $2 million.

The ribbon cutting event hosted by the Pyramid Companies on May 31, 2007 featured an opera performance inside of the Arcade.

The deadline for responses to the RFP is September 30. LCRA wisely requires all proposals to follow the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, basic standards for retaining the historic character of buildings required by all historic rehab tax credit programs. The RFP can be found here.

Lynn Josse and Stacy Sone wrote the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Arcade Building; that document is online here.

The last major downtown development RFP issued by LCRA was issued in 2005 for rehabilitation of the Syndicate Trust Building at 915 Olive Street one block west. LoftWorks LLC, owned by Craig Heller, won that bid.