Category: Historic Preservation

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Central West End DeVille Motor Hotel Historic Preservation Illinois Mid-Century Modern Motels

Springfield’s State House Inn: Another Successful Mid-Century Motel Renovation

by Michael R. Allen

Photograph from the Historic Sites Commission of Springfield website.

The first motel in Springfield, Illinois was the State House Inn at 101 E. Adams Street in the heart of downtown. Built in 1961 and designed by Henry Newhouse, the State House Inn is a contemporary of St. Louis’ threatened DeVille Motor Hotel.

However, the State House Inn is celebrated by its city and has received the benefit of a historically-sensitive renovation. In 2003, the motel reopened after a three-year, $8 million renovation. Today, the motel’s guests enjoy lovely modern lodgings just a short walk from Springfield’s major attractions as well as the Amtrak station.

Could the DeVille be the beneficiary of a similar renovation? While not downtown, the DeVille is a short walk from some of the city’s attractions — the Cathedral, Forest Park — and near light rail that connects to our Greyhound/Amtrak station. The Central West End stays open later than downtown Springfield, too, with many restaurants and bars within a short walk of the motel. With the same applied imagination that the State House Inn received, the DeVille could be one of St. Louis’ coolest places to stay.

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

Daily DeVille #2

Demolition of the former DeVille Motor Hotel, 4483 Lindell Boulevard, will be on Monday’s Preservation Board agenda. Read more here.

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

Daily DeVille #1

The DeVille Motor Hotel viewed from the corner of Taylor and Lindell. Oh mighty modern motel, how you soar!

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

Help Stop a New Parking Lot on Lindell

by Michael R. Allen

Graphic by Kara Clark Holland.

The day has arrived: On next Monday, June 22, the St. Louis Preservation Board will consider the demolition of the DeVille Motor Hotel (recently the San Luis Apartments) at 4483 Lindell Boulevard. The Archdiocese of St. Louis has asked the Board to conduct a preliminary review of its plan to demolish the mid-century motel and build a surface parking lot. As a preliminary review, the issue is not tied to an actual demolition permit. However, if the Board grants preliminary review, the city’s Cultural Resources Office must approve the demolition permit (after any stipulations placed on issuance have been met). If the preliminary review ends up with a denial, the Archdiocese will have to return to the Preservation Board with a new plan.

While some have said that this is a “done deal,” that is not true. The Preservation Board can block the demolition next Monday. However, your help is needed — the Board seeks direction not only from the applicant and preservation professionals, but from the wider public. Central West End residents especially should chime in.

I should also note that those who don’t particularly like the DeVille but loathe the urban design travesty of a surface lot on Lindell Boulevard will be best served by board denial of the current proposal. Once the parking lot is approved, the idea of a new building on the site is at the Archdiocese’s discretion. Don’t hold your breath.

Please send your written comments, no matter how brief, to the Preservation Board by submitting an e-mail to Board Secretary Adonna Buford at BufordA@stlouiscity.com. You might consider copying your letter to Alderwoman Lyda Krewson (D-28th), who represents the DeVille site and whose leadership on this matter would be helpful.

You can also send a letter via postal mail to:

Preservation Board
c/o Cultural Resources Office
1015 Locust Street, Suite 1200
St. Louis, MO 63101

If you would like to present your comments in person, the Preservation Board meeting is at 4:00 P.M. on the 22nd at 1015 Locust, Suite 1200. There are several items on the agenda before the San Luis, so the meeting may be long.

Everything you need to know about the issue is online at No Parking Lot on Lindell!.

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Downtown Historic Preservation

Preservation of Police Headquarters

by Michael R. Allen

Picking up on the Downtown St. Louis Business blog’s post: St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Chief Daniel Isom wants an overhaul of police headquarters, and one option he will present to the Board of Police Commissioners is demolition of Police Headquarters and replacement with a new building. The other options are renovation (sensible) and relocation into new quarters (perhaps most expensive).

The Police Headquarters Building, built in 1927 and designed by Mauran, Russell & Crowell, is an integral part of our civic buildings group. Losses in the past twenty years of the Kiel Auditorium, Police court, Board of Elections, Jail and the Children’s buildings have already diminished that group. The Headquarters and the adjacent Police Academy, built in 1928 and also designed by Mauran, Russell and Crowell, form a distinguished if austere pair.

The Police Headquarters is not a City Landmark, is not listed in the National Register of Historic Places and sits in a ward (the 7th) that lacks preservation review of demolition permits. All of those statuses should change, but National Register listing could be the most beneficial for the department to come up with a financially feasible plan for rehabilitation. Our ancestors had a knack for building great public buildings, and we have a knack for rehabbing them for original or new uses. Chief Isom and the Board of Police Commissioners can count on a lot of help — and creativity — preserving Police Headquarters.

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Brick Theft Historic Preservation North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place Theft

A Hebert Street Story

by Michael R. Allen

Our story starts in the heat of the summer, 2007. Two one-story shotgun houses sit on a block of Hebert Street between 25th Street and Parnell in St. Louis Place. Both houses have sat side by side since 1895, when they were built. On the left, 2530 Hebert Street is occupied by a family. On the right, 2532 Hebert is boarded up and has been owned by a holding company called N & G Ventures since December 2005. The overgrowth is evident, with tall woody growth and mosquitoes presenting a nuisance to the family next door.

Draw back for a bigger picture, and we see that the two-story house to the east of the occupied house is also vacant and boarded. A company called MLK 3000 purchased that house in March 2007, requiring that its owner evict the tenants before the sale closed. We see that other buildings have fallen vacant and been demolished on this block, leaving vacant lots in varying degrees of maintenance.

The family living at 2530 Hebert Street have lived through tough times that got worse. In 2007, the identity of the holding company owner became public knowledge. McEagle Properties was buying land and buildings in north St. Louis for a large development. Details of the plan were unknown.

In May 2008, a string of arson hit this area of St. Louis Place. Ten vacant buildings went up in flames within a three day period. Police arrested a suspect who was released uncharged. No one has been charged with the arson. However, off the record officers say that the arsons were connected to the brick theft that has plagued north St. Louis for years and has escalated in St. Louis Place since 2006.

Perhaps it is not surprising that our family on Hebert Street sold their home to a McEagle holding company, Union Marin, in July 2008, for $75,000. Who else would have paid the family that much to relieve them of living on what had become a desolate block? They could have sold directly to McEagle for a decent price, or to one of the middle-man speculators who would have paid them $50,000 and sold to McEagle at $75,000.

Let’s move forward a year and see what happened to the houses on Hebert Street.


Ah, the brick thieves struck the fine little homes! On May 25, 2009, not only was 2532 Hebert Street reduced to a foundation, but the house that had been occupied less than a year earlier was down to three walls. That’s what happens when there are no eyes and ears on a block to watch out for criminals.

The brick thieves have been striking this area for years, often taking their bricks to nearby dealers around 25th and University streets. The thieves work in broad daylight and on weekends, and yet few ever get caught by police.

No matter — this week the house at 2530 Hebert Street is down to fewer than two full walls. The scene is garish, with the well-painted front doors and their decorative surrounds leading into a wrecked home. The water runs in the basement, where a washing machine can be seen. The sagging floors are ready to collapse any day now.

Next door, the formerly-solid two-story house has now been hit. The thieves have struck this house since May 25, because there was no damage evident then. What sort of city lets this sort of crime happen so brazenly? That’s a question for another story.

Perhaps none of this matters at all: on the slides that McEagle showed at a meeting on May 21, this block was part of a large “employment center” where many extant historic buildings were replaced by large new ones. If the city assents to this plan through a redevelopment ordinance, many other buildings will disappear. However, the shocking and illegal campaign of brick theft is not a fair or civilized way to prepare the development area.

I hope that our story ends with the arrest and conviction of the thieves who destroyed the house son Hebert as well as the dealers who fence brick knowing the illicit source. In fact, a happy end would have the larger penalties assessed against those who profit the most from brick theft — not the poor guys with pick axes, but the people who sell the brick out of town to build the McMansions of the Sun Belt. Then, we would have an open conversation about historic preservation and the McEagle project, reach consensus, watch a great project get built and all would live happily ever after.

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

Realizing the Potential of a Mid-Century Motel

by Michael R. Allen

On May 1, the National Park Service listed a mid-century motel on Lindell Boulevard in the National Register of Historic Places. This recognition went not to the much-celebrated, threatened DeVille Motor Hotel, but to its predecessor one block west, the former Bel Air Motel at 4630 Lindell Boulevard.

Along with the National Register listing, the Bel Air has received a $9 million renovation by the Roberts Companies and rebranding as the Hotel Indigo. Although not yet open, the spiffed-up modern motel has attracted a lot of positive attention. Central West End residents can’t believe their eyes when they look at what was recently a run-down Best Western. Others have taken notice, too: last month, Landmarks Association of St. Louis bestowed upon the Roberts brothers one of the Most Enhanced Sites awards, further recognizing the mid-century renovation.

The motel’s streamline frame has been cleaned and repainted a crisp white (the previous colors were black and pink), the obnoxious canopy rebuilt in a manner sympathetic with the motel’s design and the interior updated. All in all, the Hotel Indigo is a shining, clean, cool testament to the power of imagination and rehabilitation. The place hasn’t looked this great since opening day in 1958!

That opening day was a big event itself, since the Bel Air was the city’s first motel. The motel (short for “motor hotel”) style of lodging dated back to California in 1925. Motels before World War II tended to be “motor courts” like the celebrated Coral Court where rooms had separate exterior entrances and often private garages facing out on a court or central driveway. In St. Louis, a few of these courts were built in St. Louis County and in Illinois on Route 66. The city had its large, fine hotels with lodging, dinner and dancing all under one roof.

Developer Norman K. Probstein thought that the modern motel and the city hotel could be melded into a form new to St. Louis, the urban motel or motor lodge. In 1957, Probstein hired Wilburn McCormack to design a two-story motel for a site on Lindell. construction was underway that year. McCormack’s design was spare and used the principles of the International style. Rooms were accessed both by interior hallway. Some rooms have balconies facing a courtyard. Parking was underneath the motel. There was an outside swimming pool and an inside restaurant, expanded later in 1961. After opening, the Bel Air had so much business that Probstein added a third floor (designed by Russell, Schwarz, Mullgardt & Van Hoefen) in 1959 to bring the motel to a grand total of 198 rooms. Later, Probstein opened a downtown Bel Air East at Fourth and Washington (now the Hampton Inn), and dubbed the original Bel Air the “Bel Air West.”

Here is what the Bel Air looked like in 1979, with the Doctors Building visible in the background:

Over the years, the motel’s luster was lost through changes in ownership, interior decoration and exterior painting and signage. The Bel Air lost more of its historic character than the DeVille Motor Hotel has, yet it retained more than enough beauty to attract the interest of a developer and get listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Roberts Companies purchased the motel in 2007 and worked with Killeen Studio Architects to develop a thoughtful, respectful rehabilitation plan. Karen Bode Baxter, Tim Maloney and I wrote the National Register of Historic Places nomination.

The exterior is back to near-original condition, with a few changes like the glass block entrance. Inside, where fewer details remained, the style is more contemporary than retro but a few historic elements can be found. One of the coolest features is the etched brick wall in a third floor suite:


One of the fundamental elements of the design of the Bel Air is the contrast between the white-painted concrete piers and caps and the red brick. The rehabilitation revives this stark and magnetic element on all sides. Here’s a look at the rear courtyard:

The renewed Bel Air Motel shows us that mid-century motels can be rehabilitated beautifully and that developers are interested in tackling these buildings. While many of the city’s modern motels are lost or reclad, those that are left could very well follow the path that the Roberts Companies has wonderfully shown us is possible.

(Contemporary photographs courtesy of the Roberts Companies.)

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Downtown Historic Preservation

Kiel Opera House Will Be Under Construction Again

by Michael R. Allen

Photograph of a scale plaster model of the Kiel Opera House, courtesy of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.

This morning, by a vote of 25-1 the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved the redevelopment plan for the Kiel Opera House proposed by SCP Worldwide and McEagle Properties. This action green-lights a swift rehabilitation plan that will have the grand opera house reopened by Christmas 2010. While the redevelopment terms may not be ideal, they are an improvement over the years of city inaction and political hostility to the opera house.

The Kiel Opera House opened in April 1934 as Municipal Auditorium and Opera House. The Municipal Auditorium was a true people’s palace, designed to bring citizens in touch with art, music, culture and ideas. Designed by LaBeaume and Klein, the building combined classical formalism with modern, Art Deco sensibility — a perfect balance of restraint and exuberance that captured the spirit of a growing city. The later namesake, Mayor Henry Kiel, strongly backed the construction of a tremendous public resource forsaken by a later generation. However, construction came about through a bold financing move — inclusion in the $87 million series of bond issues voters approved in 1923. Construction was an extraordinary and visionary act by city government. (The full history is available in Lynn Josse’s excellent National Register of Historic Places nomination for Kiel.)

The current rehabilitation plan should not have been extraordinary or visionary, because essentially Dave Checketts is simply reopening a facility for its original purpose. How that reopening ever became a controversial move is unfathomable, and rooted in a pervasive local mercantilism. (Read more in Steve Sagarra’s “Personal Politics: Revitalization of the Kiel Opera House”.)

Sure, Checketts’ company and McEagle are putting up little of the total project cost of $73.5 million themselves, but the details of the financing are not surprising. The city will issue $29 million in bonds financed by the $1.5 million in entertainment taxes generated — a deal that the St. Louis Cardinals already enjoy. (If the owners fail to generate those tax revenues, they are on the hook for the annual amount.) The use of historic rehab tax credits on the project is conventional. All in all, the deal is not a big risk for the city, and it invests the city government in the future of a public asset that the city has stewarded poorly for the past eighteen years.

For nearly two decades, Kiel Opera House has sat empty for no good reason. The facility is actually in good shape, with the interior largely intact and few significant maintenance problems. Civic leadership has been completely lacking. Kiel for the Performing Arts, Russ Carter, “Kiel Man” Ed Golterman and other activists kept the faith for years as two mayoral administrations studied various plans to gut the opera house to the private benefit of other parties. In fact it has taken a relative newcomer to city politics, Dave Checketts, to force the city to do something with the old people’s palace. The tenacity of McEagle Properties — subject of much of my recent writing — is a good match for this project, and has certainly helped move the plan to reality.

It’s unfathomable that the issue of competition would even be a major deterrent to reopening the Kiel, and that the owners of the Fox Theater would demand and obtain concessions regarding show booking and other details. If St. Louis cannot support two great live performance venues, we might as well hang up our claim to being a major city. Who wants to live in a one-theater town?

At any rate, in honor of the redevelopment, I am posting construction photographs from 1932 courtesy of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.

Here’s a shot from April 1932 showing the cleared area and the beginning of construction:


Later in 1932, Mayor Victor J. Miller and others set the cornerstone at 14th and Market streets:


Construction of the foundation was progressing by the November date of the cornerstone laying. The following photographs show the temporary stands erected for viewing the ceremony:

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

What Happens to Hopmann Cornice?

by Michael R. Allen

Hopmann Cornice is a family-owned business located at 2573 Benton Street in St. Louis Place, between Parnell and Jefferson. Hopmann Cornice has been manufacturing tin and copper cornices, gutters and downspouts since 1880, and has been housed in the larger building here since 1883 (the house to the west was subsumed into the operation later).

Hopmann is an inspiration — a company that has done the same thing for over 125 years, with few complaints from customers. Nowadays, a lot of Hopmann’s work is repair and replacement of historic cornices. Sometimes Hopmann ends up replicating and repairing its own historic work.

While Hopmann’s buildings aren’t historically perfect (note the metal siding covering the second floor as well as the boarded windows), the facility is serviceable, tidy and historically living. In many ways, the Hopmann buildings are more historically correct under continuous use than they would be with a fancy rehabilitation (which they do not require).

Of course, Hopmann’s buildings are far more likely to disappear than to be rehabilitated. Sensient to the west has bought out much of the land surrounding Hopmann for its large plant. Hopmann Cornice also is in the middle of McEagle’s NorthSide project, and more precisely is located in the southern end of one of the project’s planned industrial/commercial hubs. In fact, on the slide that McEagle showed at a meeting on May 21, this block of Benton Street is gone, and the Hopmann buildings along with it.

Hopmann’s building also appears on the TIF application for the project that McEagle submitted to the city last week. However, according to McEagle, that list contained some properties that they do not wish to purchase and they will resubmit the property list soon.

Perhaps McEagle has no use for the Hopmann Cornice land, and perhaps it won’t appear on the new list. Perhaps Hopmann Cornice will accept relocation. However, the project should defer to Hopmann and other long-time small businesses. These businesses are the existing job centers, generating work and city revenue. There is no need to displace good commercial stewards, and alderwomen April Ford-Griffin (D-5th) and Marlene Davis (D-19th) would do well to stand by these businesses. If they don’t want to be on the list of needed properties, they should not have to be. In the case of Hopmann, we have a business that is not only a stable long-time business but one that does unique and important work. If anything, McEagle may want to get Hopmann’s bids on the historic rehabilitation itemized in the sources and uses section of the TIF application. No one else will do the work quite like that!

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Historic Preservation North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Board of Aldermen Urban Assets LLC

French Introduces Bill to Place 21st Ward in Preservation Review

by Michael R. Allen

Today Alderman Antonio French (D-21st) introduced Board Bill 78 to make his ward one of the preservation review districts governed by the city’s preservation ordinance. Preservation review allows the city’s Cultural Resources Office to review demolition permits in the ward and deny them based on the architectural merit and reuse potential criteria established by the ordinance.

The 21st ward is one of nine city wards that are not preservation review areas. Here is a map showing the distribution of wards that do not participate (in white):


This map shows that the area covered by the McEagle NorthSide project (mostly the 5th and 19th wards) is not included in preservation review. Neither is most of the north city swath in which Urban Assets and other holding companies are buying buildings and land.

A ward’s lack of preservation review enables demolition on a wide scale — not necessarily all at once, either. The conditions of many wards without preservation review have deteriorated through the loss of one building at a time for decades. Loss of buildings means loss of residents, loss of job and loss of a sense of community — adding up to conditions that make wards vulnerable for land-banking. Preservation review is not designed to keep every old building standing forever, but to create a mechanism for careful decision-making about the physical resources of our neighborhoods.

Alderman French has a great ward with a largely intact building stock. Placing the 21st ward under preservation review will help keep the 21st ward in good shape for generations to come. By making the move to place the ward under such review early in his tenure, French shows that he will be working to protect and strengthen the neighborhoods he already governs, rather than jockeying for the big development that can shatter communities.