Category: Historic Preservation

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Historic Preservation North St. Louis

St. Louis American Editorializes on North Side Preservation

by Michael R. Allen

Today’s edition of the St. Louis American carried the smart editorial “Urban Preservation and Politics.” That the city’s African-American newspaper sees fit to editorialize about historic preservation in north St. Louis shows that we re amid a paradigm shift, at least insofar as elected officials across north city are concerned. By placing his ward into the city’s preservation review program, Alderman Antonio French (D-21st) may have started an economic and housing development revolution.

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Central West End Demolition Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern Preservation Board

Why the Friends of the San Luis Continue

by Michael R. Allen

On July 27, Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker, Jr. dismissed the Friends of the San Luis‘ petition for injunctive relief. The petition sought to stop demolition of the San Luis Apartments so that the Friends could file an appeal of the Preservation Board’s approval of the demolition. Dierker not only dismissed the case, but did so on the basis that the Friends had no legal standing to bring forth a preservation appeal under the city’s preservation laws.

So, the building is gone and the case dismissed. Why are the Friends of the San Luis still fighting?

If left unchallenged, Judge Dierker’s ruling could set case precedent that citizens and advocacy groups lack the right to appeal decisions of the Preservation Board. Since the Preservation Board and its enabling laws govern the entire city, all citizens are affected by the decisions of the Board and deserve the right to appeal on procedural grounds.

Why would the Friends of the San Luis care about the right to appeal? Didn’t you want to save one building?

True, our organization was formed to advocate for a specific building. Yet our ability to do so was undercut by Dierker’s decision. The members of the Friends of the San Luis are active in other preservation matters in which the right to appeal is essential. If people have to go to court to prove our right to participate on every matter, concerned citizens won’t be able to actually fight for our city’s historic buildings. We must legally clarify that right to protect citizen preservation advocacy.

Okay. What’s next?

We will file an appeal of Dierker’s ruling to the Missouri Court of Appeals on the basis of his narrow definition of who has appeal rights. That appeal must be filed within 30 days of the ruling. Then, the Missouri Court of Appeals will schedule its hearing.

What if you lose at the Missouri Court of Appeals?

We could appeal further to the Missouri Supreme Court. However, if the St. Louis preservation ordinance’s right to appeal is not clear enough to withstand appellant judicial review, then there is a bigger problem than one judge’s point of view. Then we will know that the ordinance itself needs more clear language protecting citizen right to appeal.

Categories
Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern Midtown Urbanism

More "Urban" Is Not Always Better

by Michael R. Allen

The old Raiffie Vending Company building at 3663 Forest Park Avenue may not look like much, especially since its owner has let it sit without windows for the past three years. However, the two-story modern brick building has great qualities. Built in 1948, the building has a streamline modernist style that, while not greatly articulated here, is quietly attractive. Since the windows were part of the building design, the stylistic character was more clear before removal. Built of steel and brick masonry, the building is solid. This is the type of construction that is infinitely adaptable and practical for almost any use imaginable.

Of course, your mind might change when you see the new hotel that Sasak Corporation plans to build on the site of the modern warehouse. Five stories tall with wide street-level retail openings, this building adds more building density and urban connection to the site. Its masonry work is more interesting than that of the plain little box that now occupied the site, right? The hotel is a more urban building, you might think, and will add urban vitality to the site. Despite some flaws, like the 100-space garage in back being visible from the street through a pointless drive in front, this building makes the block more “urban” than the Raiffie building and thus constitutes an improvement.

Wrong.

Here is where the difference between rendering and reality comes into play. The developers are proposing to build this hotel at a cost of $90 per square foot, a price range below that of your average do-it-yourself Old North rehab. The masonry may look lovely in a tiny JPG, but it’s not going to be brick in real life. The hotel will be clad in precast panels, spaced by those oh-so-obvious black seams.

Is the shift to “more urban” worth it if it means throwing away better construction for a cheaply-built building that meets all of the rote urbanist qualities? I say no emphatically. We can’t keep throwing away buildings while we sit on an alarming amount of vacant land. There are many other sites in Midtown where a hotel could be built, and the old warehouse at 3663 Forest Park itself could be adapted if the developers wanted to try. But they’d have to spend more than $90 per square foot.

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Belleville, Illinois Historic Preservation Metro East

Old Belleville Turner Hall Could Be Yours

by Michael R. Allen

The city of Belleville, Illinois has extended through August 30 the period for its Request for Proposals for the old city-owned Belleville Turner Hall. Located just north of the bustling Main Street business district at the southwest corner of 1st and A streets, the large building enjoys strong architectural and social significance.

The RFP can be found online here with instructions on how to contact the city for interested developers. This is a great opportunity: a large mixed-use building adjacent to a commercial district that seems to add new shops and pedestrians every week.

The Belleville YMCA used the building from 1960 through 2005, so the building is most commonly called the Old YMCA Building. Hence, the advocacy website for the effort to preserve the building is called Y Save the Y. That site has a lot of historical information as well as photographs.

Designed by Julius Floto and completed in 1923, the Craftsman-influenced Turner Hall features a wooden bow-truss gymnasium and a theater on the second floor with storefronts below. The 20,000 square foot building combined the large spaces required by the Turners with space for small businesses along the downtown the sidewalk. To this day, the building remains remarkably intact (inside and out) and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency has determined that the building is individually eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Citizens have submitted a nomination that is pending.

There is an interesting architectural connection between the Belleville Turner Hall and Frank Lloyd Wright: Julius Floto, an structural engineer by training, was the structural engineer for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. After the hotel survived the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, Floto published the article “Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan” in the February 1924 issue of Architectural Record. The article detailed the structural properties that made the hotel survive the devastation.

Categories
Demolition Edwardsville, Illinois Historic Preservation Illinois Metro East

Madison County Still Could Save Part of Poor Farm Complex

by Michael R. Allen

On Monday, wreckers from Premier Demolition of St. Louis began demolishing the two remaining buildings of the Madison County Poor Farm at 333 S. Main Street in Edwardsville, Illinois. The buildings, owned by Madison County, had recently been used as the Madison County Sheltered Care Home for developmentally disabled and mentally ill persons. There was considerable controversy when the County Board voted to close the home and move the residents to other facilities. While there seems to be reasonable doubt over the closure, there was no question that the buildings themselves are historically significant. The question was whether or not the Madison County Board had the foresight to avoid rushing to demolish a Civil War-era building and its cohort.

The demolition is hasty and regrettable for two reasons:

First, there is no plan to do anything with the large site save seeding the building footprints after the foundations are filled. The buildings were sound and in decent repair, and posed no public safety risk to residents of Edwardsville. The cost of demolition is around $70,000. The same amount could have mothballed the buildings for future use, or been spent on a more pressing county issue.

Second, the Edwardsville Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) designated the complex a city landmark in 2000 and voted to block demolition. City landmark status is a rare designation anywhere, and it denotes wide community recognition of a site being one of the most important to the identity of a city. That the HPC and its chairwoman Kathryn Hopkins fought so hard against demolition should have at least delayed the County Board’s rush to tear down an irreplaceable landmark.

Postcard view found online here.

The complex began its life as the Madison County Poor Farm in the 1860s. Originally, the site was 180 acres with additional residential buildings on site. This facility was like those found in counties and cities across America: a refuge for the indigent who could not work due to age, infirmity or other malady. (St. Louis County’s Poor Farm was located on present-day Arsenal Street west of Sublette. Two buildings remain at 59th and Arsenal, while the rest of the complex was wrecked in 1982.)

The system was sad but practical. People who could not afford to live elsewhere came to the farm. Some had small jobs working on the grounds or in the food plots that fed the residents. Others were idle, living out their days in the institution. When residents died, they were buried in a cemetery behind the Poor Farm, where to this day 600 unmarked graves and one general monument remain.

The historic view above shows the two extant buildings. The two-story Italianate-style building at left was the Superintendent’s Building, built in 1865. Architecturally, the building was designed in the rustic strain of the Italianate style, which made use of asymmetry, a central design feature like a tower, projecting bay or cupola and tall, arched windows. This style was prevalant in American residential, institutional and commercial design from 1855 through around 1885.

The Superintendent’s Building is a refined work in the style. The building has quoins running up each corner, masonry arches over each window rather than the common cast iron hood-molds and fine decorative brackets under the roof overhang placed at the corners.

The projecting central bay has a defining fornt gable and some rather striking tall, narrow windows.
As these photographs show, the Superindent’s Building is not currently under demolition. In fact, the interior has barely been touched. However, workers have removed historic window sash from behind the storm windows. Has the sash been destroyed?

The residential hall, built in 1900, has not escaped death. While the front elevation of the building looks intact, displaying a simple Italianate-inspired design that harmonizes with the earlier neighbor, the back reveals that demolition has removed nearly half of the building mass.

Alas, the residential hall is lost. However, the Superindent’s Building is largely intact, structurally sound and not affected by demolition of the surrounding building fabric. The Madison County Board could still intervene to stop its destruction. While removal of the residential hall diminishes the context of the Superintendent’s Building, it does not impact the architectural integrity of the remaining building. There is still a chance to preserve part of the landmark Poor Farm.

One possibility would be to complete demolition of the surrounding buildings, mothball the Superintendent’s Building and issue a Request for Proposals for the site from developers who might wish to renovate the building. The County could end up breaking even on the old Poor Farm.

Perhaps a word to Madison County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan could stop total destruction:

Honorable Alan J. Dunstan
Madison County Administration Building
157 N. Main Street
Suite 165
Edwardsville, IL 62025-1963
(618) 296-4341

Categories
Central West End Demolition DeVille Motor Hotel Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

"Certainly This Will Be an Impressive Monument"

by Michael R. Allen

On the afternoon of Monday, July 20, Building Commissioner Frank Oswald officially issued the demolition permit for the DeVille Motor Hotel (formerly the San Luis Apartments) at 4483 Lindell Boulevard in the Central West End. Ahrens Demolition had already been working on interior demolition and abatement, and wasted no time removing windows and concrete panels. By mid-week, the east wing of the old modern motel was reduced to a shell after Ahrens obliterated the exterior envelope and started in on the concrete structure.

The previous Friday, July 17, the Friends of the San Luis filed a petition for injunctive relief in circuit court. We contended that our right to appeal issuance of the demolition permit, which could only be exercised after the permit was issued, was moot if the wrecking ball was swinging. Judge Rober J. Dierker, Jr. denied our initial motion for a temporary restraining order and then, on Monday July 27, dismissed our petition. The legal wrangling had no impact on demolition activity, of course, but the loss is now a fact of life.

This is a sad end to a building whose idiosyncratic modern form was once hailed as innovative. Architect Charles Colbert designed the motel to rise far above the ranks of the Holiday Inns and Downtowners springing up in urban settings across the country. While definitely automobile-oriented, the DeVille had a sense of urban setting many of its contemporaries lacked. The motel made deft use of its site, reserving only the existing setback on Lindell for a lawn and building out the rest of the site.

Yet the mass, site and style were not the only features noted in the press. When the builders broke ground in October 1961, they were making local building history. The new DeVille Motor Hotel would be the first major building built after the city’s adoption of a new building code earlier that year.

Prior to the 1961 building code, large buildings were restrained by requirements that the majority of wall surface area meet a defined thickness. Materials like concrete panels and glass had to be employed within larger wall systems, and could not be used to clad an entire building. Before 1961, construction of a glass high-rise in St. Louis was not permitted by code. The removal of the old restrictions allowed St. Louis to embrace the building technologies that allowed for fully modern architectural expression.

Mayor Raymond Tucker was an enthusiast for the DeVille project. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article from 1961 (“$4,500,000 Hotel to Be Built at Corner of Lindell, Taylor,” September 30, 1961), the mayor raved: “Certainly, this will be an impressive monument to the perseverance of those far-sighted citizens who worked on our code for more than five years.”

Greater modern expressions would rise in St. Louis, of course, but the DeVille was the first to fully embrace the code. For 46 years, the DeVille remained an impressive monument to the potential of modern design.

Categories
Central West End Demolition Historic Preservation Planning

Medical Center Creeping Into the Central West End

by Michael R. Allen

Ecology of Absence has long covered the creep of the BJC medical center into surrounding urban fabric. Now we look at a (hopefully) rare instance of the corporation extending its reach north of the Forest Park Parkway into the southern end of the Central West End. Euclid’s pedestrian-friendly streetscape has long been an antidote to the medical center’s monotony, but now the architectural characteristics of each area will collide.

On Monday, the Preservation Board will consider on a preliminary basis demolition of the Ettrick (shown above) and three other buildings to make way for a new 12-story clinic building at the corner of Euclid and Forest Park as well as a new park further west. (Read the Cultural Resources Office staff report here.) Since the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) staff is strongly supportive of the demolition, and many urbanists seem comfortable with the new building, approval may be a foregone conclusion. Still, I think that preserving the Ettrick deserves more consideration. The current plan was enshrined in 2007 by the Board of Aldermen through Ordinance 67939, so the demolition plans are not news. However, a rush to approve the concept and the related park plan would be a mistake on the part of the Preservation Board.

The Ettrick is one of the city’s oldest apartment buildings and dates to 1905. A. Blair Ridington, an English-born architect and amateur Egyptologist who designed the Melrose Apartments at 206 N. Sarah (1907) as well as many houses across the city, designed the Ettrick. (Ettrick, by the way, is a region on the Scottish borders containing a large forest.)

Construction of the Ettrick was part of a trend toward the relatively-new apartment-style building for multi-family middle class housing. Previously, most people lives in tenements, which are so defined by having separate exterior entrances for each unit. Apartments provided elegant foyers and enclosed staircases. Within a year of the Ettrick’s completion, the first luxury apartment building, the Colchester (later dubbed “the ABCs”), would be built a block away at Kingsighway and Laclede.

The Cultural Resources Office claims that getting the Ettrick listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a single site would be difficult, but overlooks the fact that the later Melrose and Colchester were easily listed. The Ettrick is much more significant to the development of the apartment building and Ridington’s career than the Melrose.

The Ettrick’s style is decidedly Craftsman, and its details are lovely. The Flemish bond masonry, the use of cut stone, the hoods over the entrances — all provide expression of the building that is elegant as well as humane. The details are sized to the scale of the human hand. People often comment on the awkward below-grade entrances; these were created later when the raised lawn was removed and the basement converted into commercial space. The original design was more satisfying and in keeping with the setback and lawn shape of Forest Park.

Across Forest Park Parkway from the craftsman-detailed Ettrick stands a cavalcade of sanitized, machine-scaled giant buildings. BJC has done much to build up its campus, but little to address the life of the pedestrian.

I suppose that the medical center is the domain of its employees, patients and vendors, rather than an extension of the neighborhood. However, the Central West End MetroLink station lies just a few yards south of this intersection. Crossing Forest Park here is like leaving St. Louis and entering Campus Anywhere, USA. A few vestiges of the historic medical center remain, but the new architecture generally rises only to the level of need and no further. (The Siteman Center is an exception in form, although not in material.)

At any rate, transpose the medical center scale with that of Euclid Avenue to the north, and one sees exactly what the stakes are: architecture that reaches out to human beings could be wiped out for architecture designed by computer modeling, equations and corporate intelligence. The new building’s street-level retail simply is a programmatic improvement over the historic buildings that occupy the site.

The joined apartment buildings to the north of the Ettrick, alas, have been marred by re-facing and infill. These buildings date to 1905 and originally set back from Euclid with front lawns. The rise of the first floor above the sidewalk indicates that this was not originally a mixed-use building. If the storefronts below sidewalk level feel like basement space, that is because they are.

While the loss of a usable building is regrettable, this is one building whose future is negotiable. If BJC wishes to take it down to building something more urban, let it. However, let the new design be every inch original, and let the skin be other than “rental tan” concrete panels and teal-tinged glass. The Park East Tower has already introduced a new scale to this stretch of Euclid, and that is fine, but that is no reason to surplant the existing character wholesale. Hopefully BJC’s clinic is the last incursion north of Forest Park Parkway.

Even in its current state, this muddled old building has more heart and soul than much of the new construction that BJC has built in the last 30 years. Demolition in favor of a building that is architecturally sensitive to Euclid and its pedestrians — no matter how tall — would be a positive change. Demolition for another unmemorable hospital building — in a nation chock full of them, no less — would be a detriment.

The other part of the application to the Cultural Resources Office is demolition of the Schoenberg Residence Hall at 4949 Forest Park, west of the abysmal parking garage west of the Ettrick. This fine, restrained work of Georgian Revival design would be replaced by park space. Jewish Hospital, whose building on Kingshighway BJC plan to preserve, built this building in 1934 as a residential hall for its student nurses.

CRO Director Kathleen Shea errantly states in her recommendation to the Preservation Board that there is no possible way to stage construction of the 12-story clinic building without demolition of this building first to create a staging site. Shea’s claim is undercut by countless instances of high-rise construction within the restricted core of downtowns across the country, from Chicago to Des Moines. Closure of Forest Park and Euclid are impossible, of course, but there are numerous ways to stage the project without demolition of Schoenberg.

The urban voices who do not share my view on the Ettrick seem united against demolition of Schoenberg. The replacement of a viable building with a viable building is contested territory, but the replacement with empty space is not — as the San Luis Apartments effort demonstrates. The absurdity of creating a new park a half-block from Forest Park is obvious, and the Preservation Board should deny the demolition of Schoenberg no matter what its majority thinks of the other two demolitions.

Generally, the land use planning here is spotty. BJC owns much vacant land and surface parking, including frontage on Forest Park Parkway. There seems to be a way to preserve either or both the Ettrick and the Schoenberg Residence Hall while building the new clinic. Why does the Preservation Board only now get review of a plan approved by ordinance in 2007? Well, the preservation ordinance does not authorize preservation review of redevelopment ordinances even though those ordinances often bind the CRO and the Board. Of course, the city needs more sensible urban design laws that would coordinate decision-making rather than hand off deals to the Preservation Board.

Still, this is no done deal, at least under the preservation ordinance. Let’s see what happens Monday.

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern Preservation Board

Friends of the San Luis Seek Demolition Halt, Right to Appeal

by Michael R. Allen


From the Friends of the San Luis (of which I am now President):

FRIENDS OF THE SAN LUIS SEEK DEMOLITION HALT, RIGHT TO APPEAL PRESERVATION BOARD ACTION

On July 17, the Friends of the San Luis, Inc. filed a petition in Circuit Court to obtain a temporary injunction that would prohibit the Archdiocese of St. Louis from proceeding with any demolition work at the San Luis Apartments until our organization has exhausted its legal appeal of the approval of the demolition permit. While we do not have a final judgment, Judge Robert Dierker, Jr. has denied our motion for a temporary restraining order. The Building Division issued a demolition permit on Monday, July 20, and preliminary demolition work is now underway.

Our mission is to preserve the San Luis Apartments, and at this eleventh hour we press onward with that basic mission but also a larger one. After the Preservation Board granted preliminary approval to the demolition by a narrow vote, we intended to appeal that decision through our right under the city’s preservation ordinance. We think that the Preservation Board’s action was made through incorrect application of the law. Furthermore, we think that that the Cultural Resources Office report on the issue misled citizens and Preservation Board members through imprecise legal reasoning that made it unclear what laws were in play. Since the Preservation Board acts only to enforce city ordinances, without clarity of which laws are being enforced there is no due process.

Under the preservation ordinance, however, we have only the right to appeal an approved demolition permit. We filed the injunction petition to ensure that we were still fighting for an actual building rather than a rubble pile. Unfortunately, Judge Dierker is not stopping demolition as well as challenging our legal standing to bring forth an appeal of the Preservation Board decision. Thus begins our larger cause.

Our preservation ordinance allows an aggrieved party to bring forth an appeal. The preservation ordinance was passed by the Board of Aldermen for the benefit of the entire city, and its stakeholders are all citizens who share the duty of protecting the city’s heritage. The law enjoins us to become stewards of our architectural heritage, and the Friends of the San Luis gladly step forward to answer that call.

We contend that citizen right to appeal the decision of the Preservation Board is a fundamental part of due process and essential to the enforcement of the preservation review ordinance. Without the right to appeal, citizen participation has severely limited impact. Citizens must have the right to act when they feel that the preservation review ordinance has been violated by its own custodians. The right to appeal is a basic legal principle, and it must be part of St. Louis’ preservation law.

While we hold out weary hope of preserving the San Luis, we must assert the right of the citizen to bring forth an appeal under preservation law. We believe that future efforts will benefit from legal protection of that right, and that its fundamental sanctity is worth pursuing no matter what happens to the San Luis.

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Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation Industrial Buildings North St. Louis Riverfront

Old Armour Company Warehouse Lost

by Michael R. Allen

The Schaeffer Moving Company had long occupied the three-story building at 2422 North Broadway, and its red enameled sign (once ablaze through neon tubing) was a familiar site to those who work and live around the area. The steel-framed building actually began its life around the turn of the century as a two-story distribution warehouse for meat-packing giant the Armour Company. The third floor was added in 1911.

The side elevation facing Benton Street (now legally vacated) was an impressive run of steel-sash windows. After the moving company vacated the building about a decade ago, the possibility for reuse easily was apparent.

Instead of reuse, however, the holding company that owns the large row of warehouses to the north (2508 N. Broadway LLC) opted to demolish the old building this month. With the street now vacated, that company can assemble a large parking lot for those buildings.

Since the old Armour building lies in the Fifth Ward, there is no preservation review that might have prevented this senseless loss. The Fifth Ward is one of eight wards out of 28 that does not participate in the city’s preservation review program. (More here.)

Hence, this is what the building looked like yesterday afternoon. Gone. Soon, the ruinous Armour Packing Plant in East St. Louis will also fall, and we will have few tangible traces to our city’s crucial role in the development of the company that turned meatpacking into a science. Yet we will have a few more places to park our cars — not bad, eh?

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

St. Louis Housing Authority Building to Be Replaced by CVS or Tower?

by Michael R. Allen

Word is circulating that the St. Louis Housing Authority is considering selling its headquarters building at 4100 Lindell Boulevard to a group of investors who seek to demolish it and build a CVS Pharmacy to compete with the nearby Walgreens. The St. Louis Housing Authority’s three-story modern building began life in 1956 as the St. Louis office of the Sperry-Rand Corporation. The architect was then-fledgling Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum. The Sperry-Rand Building is derived from International Style principles, especially the neutral colors, the recessed floors, the concrete piers, wide large windows and the applied outer metal bars. While not as accomplished as the firm’s later National Register-listed Plaza Square Apartments, this is a fine building and a subtle component of the group of modern buildings on Lindell Boulevard west of Grand Avenue. Its loss, especially at the hands of a public entity, would be a blow to the already-threatened modern landscape of Lindell Boulevard.

UPDATE: A reader sent me a note to state that there has also been discussion about replacing the building with a taller residential building.