Category: Historic Preservation

Categories
Historic Preservation South St. Louis

Sugar Loaf Mound for Sale

by Michael R. Allen

Mound City’s only remaining prehistoric mound is now for sale. Sugar Loaf Mound, a burial mound older than 1,000 years, is located on the side of the Mississippi River aside I-55 near the South Broadway exit. Readers probably know the visible small white house on the hill at that location. The hill is only the most obvious part of the mound, which is larger than it appears. The house and the mound are now listed for $400,000. Realtor Leigh Maibes of Circa Properties has started a blog on the mound, its history and the sale. Check out the blog, Sugar Loaf Mound Saint Louis. The curious can also visit the site this weekend at an open house:

The Sugar Loaf Mound House will be open this Sunday November 9, 2008 from 1-4 pm. Please feel free to stop by even if you are just a curiosity seeker. I will be on hand to answer any questions that you may have about the property and house. Please park on the side of the road opposite from the house if at all possible. Hopefully, it will be a lovely day and we will have tons of fun.

The house is located at 4420 Ohio St. Saint Louis, MO 63111 near highway 55 and Broadway. Please feel free to post questions here!

The sale raises the issue of stewardship. For over 50 years, the mound has been owned by the family that lives in the house. The family has left the mound alone, preserving what is left. Now that the family is selling the property, there is the opportunity for a preservation plan for the city’s most historic structure. Tourists love the “very old” Old Courthouse and Old Cathedral, and Cahokia Mounds in Illinois has the prestige of being a United Nations World Heritage Site. Imagine the potential for Sugar Loaf Mound as a protected public site with a solid interpretive center. Mound City could have the chance to celebrate its ancient roots, and take pride in a landmark unlike any other in the city.

Categories
Historic Preservation JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Looking at the 2800 Block of St. Louis Avenue

Behold the remaining homes of the north face of the 2800 block of St. Louis Avenue, between Leffingwell and Glasgow. This photograph suggests a block of density and varied residential architecture. Unfortunately, this photograph lies by omission.

The realistic view is offered through this altered shot of the 1909 Sanborn fire insurance map page for the block. I have placed a red “x” over each demolished building. As you can see, most of the block’s fabric is long gone. Seven historic buildings remain.


That number was nine at the start of 2008, before the city wrecked the westernmost two buildings. (See We’re Losing the Intersection of Glasgow and St. Louis”, January 16, 2008.) The wedge-shaped western building was a two story storefront building with an amazing corner turret. The demolition of the westernmost buildings came at the same time as three buildings across the street were demolished. The city’s Building Division’s over-eager Demolition Division pursued mass demolition, taking down five buildings because one had suffered damage from brick rustlers. Companies controlled by developer Paul J. McKee, Jr. owned four of the five buildings. The loss was visually devastating, but a look at the Sanborn map shows that a lot of other buildings were lost before those without any fanfare. And the fact remains that what is left is not insignificant or unworthy of conservation.


The four two-story homes are all accentuated by varying street setbacks. All are painted, but still show the full force of late 19th century St. Louis machine-pressed brick facades with limestone dressing. Despite different styles, sizes and placement, the homes all have doorways on the westernmost side of the first floor. At the east (right here), 2833 St. Louis Avenue is a strong example of the Second Empire style, with a Roman arch entrance dating it to the early 1890s. Next door, at 2835, is a lovely Italianate home with a low mansard roof rising above a cornice of patterned ornamental brick. The composition of the home is echoed somewhat in the next house to the west, at 2837, although eclecticism has freer hand. The westernmost of the group, at 2841, has a stepped front parapet that likely is not original. These houses started as single-family homes, but were later divided, un-divided and re-divided again.

The eastern three houses show even more diversity of height, style and setback. There are two one-story side-entrance houses, with the boarded western one (2829, owned by N & G Ventures LC) having a front addition that extended it out to the sidewalk. The easternmost house (2825, owned by Larmer LC), is more typical of the block’s once-prevalent two-story homes. The house has a stepped front parapet and side entrance. The flat limestone arches are striking. Again, all three started as single-family homes. The one-story homes show us that the homeowners in the late 19th century here were of diverse means. The family that could build the Second Empire town home lived smack-dab, next-door to the family that built a three-room one-story shotgun and later saved up enough to expand it one room forward.

The arrangement and condition of these seven homes compel preservation and residential infill on this block face. Despite loss and abandonment, the homes are a fine group that gives a forlorn stretch of St. Louis Avenue needed urban character. To the immediate west of Glasgow on the north face begins the dense, intact residential neighborhood of Lindell Park. Lindell Park’s homes are different than those on the 2800 block of St. Louis. The prevalent styles are later, lots are wider and homes are set further back. North of the 2800 block of St. Louis, homes are smaller, with one and one-and-a-half story homes dominant. This section of St. Louis Avenue shows an attempt to carry the architectural majesty of the section of St. Louis Avenue between Jefferson and Parnell — once known as “Millionaire’s Row” — westward to Grand. Little survives, but what does shows a section of St. Louis Avenue far less segregated than the celebrated section to the east. Just as Millionaire’s Row tells an important story, so do these houses. Like the first photograph shown here, north St. Louis without this part of St. Louis Avenue tells a lie through omission.

Categories
Historic Preservation Louis Sullivan North St. Louis

Virtual Tour of the Restored Wainwright Tomb

The St. Louis Beacon has produced a slide show on the restoration of the Wainwright Tomb in Bellefontaine Cemetery. The inimitable Robert Duffy narrates gorgeous images from Gary R. Tetley showing the interior and exterior of the revitalized mausoleum. The slideshow is available here.

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis Old North Preservation Board

Neglect by Neglect

by Michael R. Allen

In August, the St. Louis Preservation Board voted 4-1 to uphold staff denial of a demolition permit for the Italianate house at 2619-21 Hadley Street in Old North. Haven of Grace, the non-profit owner, had previously pledged to rehabilitate the house in exchange for Board and neighborhood support for demolition of a house at 2605 Hadley. Neighbors held up their end of the bargain, but after inaction the Haven applied for a demolition permit for 2619-21 Hadley in April 2008.

After the Preservation Board’s action in August, little has transpired on Hadley Street. The Haven of Grace apparently dismissed Executive Director Diane Berry, who made the public pledge for rehabilitation that garnered support for the compromise. Haven of Grace has not stabilized the building, boarded open windows or even so much as cut down a single one of the many over-six-feet-tall weeds growing around the site. By the fall, the weeds became a neighborhood eyesore.

The Preservation Board deemed the house at 2619-21 Hadley Street to be sound, despite some masonry damage, and found that its rehabilitation would not be cost-prohibitive. Obviously, the tall weeds challenge those findings by emphasizing the home’s vacancy. However, the weeds are an affront to the Haven’s own clients and neighborhood residents in the vicinity. At the Preservation Board meeting, Haven representatives tried to claim that the house was too unsound for a worker to travel within 20 feet. That’s a false claim, and regardless does not excuse the Haven from keeping the property up to municipal codes as the future of the house is meted out. Old North residents welcome the Haven of Grace and most of us are quite stunned by its board’s recent behavior regarding this house. One thing is clear: there will be no solution without dialogue.

Categories
Chicago Historic Preservation Louis Sullivan

Sullivan Discovery in Chicago Provides Consolation

by Michael R. Allen

There is great news from Chicago for admirers of the work of architect Louis Sullivan: a storefront recently uncovered on Wabash Avenue has been identified as Sullivan’s work. The indefatigable Tim Samuelson found proof that the one-story cast iron front unearthed during renovation of the block containing the former Carson Pirie Scott department store building (under renovation and being renamed the Sullivan Center) was the work of the prarie master, and not an imitation of his hand.

The elegant, if small, work’s discovery brings some consolation after tragic fires at three Sullivan-designed buildings in 2006, 150 anniversary of the architect’s birth: Pilgrim Baptist Church, left a stone shell, the Wirt Dexter Building, demolished and the Harvey House, also demolished. Sullivan’s vacation cottage in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, designed in collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright, was severly damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and his Peoples Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was underwater during this summer’s flooding.

The storefront discovery comes at the same time as another bit of good Sullivan news: the completion in October of a thorough restoration of the Wainwright Tomb in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, documented by Landmarks Association here.

Categories
Historic Preservation Missouri People

Missouri Preservation Hires Bill Hart as Field Representative


From Missouri Preservation:

Missouri Preservation is proud to announce that William (Bill) Hart has been hired as its first full-time Field Representative. William brings over fifteen years of hands-on preservation experience to his role as Field Representative. William received his Bachelor of Science degree in Historic Preservation from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia with a Master of Arts Degree in Architectural History. William became active in neighborhood preservation issues when he moved to St. Louis in the late 1970s. Through his neighborhood association, he helped to establish a not-for-profit housing corporation to deal with vacant historic buildings. In the 1980s, he worked with Market Preservation, a group which opposed massive demolition of historic buildings in the heart of the downtown. William has restored several historic buildings on his own, and eventually started his own company as a developer and general contractor, specializing in historic buildings. While working as a developer, he received awards from the Dutchtown South Community Corporation, the Home Builders Association of Saint Louis, and the St. Louis Landmarks Association. He has a special interest in documenting vanishing roadside architecture and the preservation of barns and farm buildings in Missouri. William is a native of Perryville, Missouri and currently resides in Saint Louis in the City’s Benton Park Neighborhood.

William will expand the vital outreach services provided by Missouri Preservation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to communities across the state. As an Official Statewide Partner of the National Trust and Missouri’s statewide historic preservation advocacy and education organization, Missouri Preservation provides information, technical, and strategic advocacy services to empower citizens with the tools needed to preserve their historic resources. William will represent both organizations to provide guidance on a variety of subjects including preservation techniques and approaches, fundraising, organizational development, community relations and politics, community development, and the availability of preservation resources.

The Field Representative position has been funded by a $125,000 challenge grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Entitled Partners in the Field, this matching grant had the specific purpose of providing three years of dedicated funding to expand our outreach by hiring a full-time Field Representative. Missouri Preservation recently completed the fundraising for its $125,000 match. We would like to thank our generous donors for making the expansion of our mission-driven services possible: Great Southern Bank, HBD Construction, Inc., Huebert Builders, Inc., Edward Jones, William T. Kemper Foundation, McGowan Brother Development, Raming Distributions, Inc., Renaissance Development Associates, The Roberts Companies, Stark Wilson Duncan Architects, Inc., and Stupp Bros. Bridge & Iron Co. Foundation.
We are pleased to welcome William to our staff and look forward to the expansion of our field service program. If you have a question about an historic place in your community, please contact the Missouri Preservation office at 573-443-5946. Contact information for William Hart will be listed on our website at www.preservemo.org.

Missouri Preservation, known formally as Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, is Missouri’s only statewide non-profit organization dedicated to promoting, supporting, and coordinating historic preservation activities throughout Missouri.

Categories
Historic Preservation Housing Mid-Century Modern North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

Lemonade: A Remade Section 235 House

by Michael R. Allen

A row of Section 235 Houses on North Market Street west of 25th Street in St. Louis Place.

The 1968 federal Housing Act created the Section 235 Program administered by the new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Section 235 Program enabled many Americans to become homeowners through its generous assistance: HUD made interest payments to lenders on behalf of homeowners in the program to effective reduce their monthly loan interest. The amount paid was based on the borrower’s income. In the 1970s, when interest rates were often above 10%, this program’s need was clear. The authors of Section 235 intended the program to move low-income residents as well as federal subsidy away from mass housing projects and into neighborhoods and suburbs. Of course, the lofty dreams trickled down into something less idealistic.

In reality, the program was a boon to lenders and builders but less freeing to participants. Section 235 mostly shuffled people around decaying neighborhoods, and its implementation was rarely coordinated with other programs to stabilize these places. In St. Louis, the use of the program was extensive in the 1970s and created several distinct forms spread across north St. Louis and parts of the near south side. One of these is the ubiquitous “Section 235 House,” a two-story platform-framed house with a low-pitched front gable and a second floor that overhangs the first.

There are variations on cladding, but the St. Louis Section 235 Houses mostly resemble each other. The St. Louis Section 235 House mostly interjected intself out of context, alongside historic homes that dwarfed and mocked the banal newcomers. What could have been very modern was often festooned with mock shutters, brick veneer on the first floor (improbably holding up an overhang) and other architectural absurdity. The homes set back too far from the street and from each other to mimic the truly urban forms of the St. Louis vernacular, and tended to stick out as proverbially sore thumbs.

The Section 235 House at 2322 Montgomery.

Meanwhile, other, better-off St. Louisans stayed in the city by moving into Modern Movement high-rise towers designed by “name” firms. Still, owners of the Sction 235 Houses often cast their own designs on the houses, leaving us with a legacy of rebellion against the planned form. One of the best examples stands at 2322 Montgomery Avenue in St. Louis Place. Built in 1971 and now vacant, the house barely registers as a Section 235 House. The overhangs were elminated, the gabled roof removed and rebuilt as an asymmetrical modern roof, and the front clad in a tasteful brick. Someone made this house his or her own, and the result is quite lovely. unfortunately the house, which city records show as owned by Larmer LC, stands vacant. While the house might be out of place in St. Louis Place, it sits on a block that has lost architectural consistency. Preservation seems wise and, to this writer, desirable.

Categories
Historic Preservation Metal Theft Salvage

St. Louis Building Arts Foundation Robbed

by Michael R. Allen

Writing in The Platform blog over at the Post-Dispatch, Eddie Roth breaks the terrible news that thieves stole over 1,500 pounds of historic bronze and brass hardware from the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation this week. The article includes some photographs of stolen items.

Please help return these important items to their rightful home, for the public benefit of all and not the private benefit of thieves and dealers. While the thieves make the initial profit, we all know that some dealers make a lot more by fencing stolen property. Keep your eyes open.

Categories
Historic Preservation Industrial Buildings Riverfront

The McPheeters Warehouses: A Total Loss for the City

by Michael R. Allen

Looking north on Lewis Street, May 2008.

Looking north on Lewis Street, August 2008.

Looking north on Lewis Street, October 2008.

I have pushed off writing further on the now-demolished McPheeters warehouses on Lewis Street just because doing so seemed fruitless. After all, there is no way to return the important lost buildings, and little point in aggressively emphasizing the obvious — that the demolition of the warehouses was probably city government’s biggest preservation failure of 2008.

However, the more that I think about the fine original warehouse, with its adaptable mill method body, or the one-story cold storage building whose true historic significance will never be fully established, I am upset. I think about what the site looks like now, which is worse even from the perspective of the most city-fearing casino patron. I think about what we learned during the demolition: that the central 1881 building was actually built onto the city’s bluff, using a natural limestone wall as part of its foundation (and the source of major water leaching into the building’s timber beams, causing the west wall collapse). I think about how we could have learned from the cold storage building and figured out much about St. Louis shipping, brewing, packing and other industries. We can still learn, of course, but without physical evidence it’s hard. We have lost a lot, and gained nothing.

The Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority wrecked the buildings with public funds, but the instigator was Pinnacle Entertainment, owners of the adjacent Lumiere Place casino complex. At the city’s Preservation Board, St. Louis Development Corporation Deputy Director Otis Williams — a man with a very difficult job, mind you — told the Board that Pinnacle feared loss of revenue without enhancement of its surroundings. The old buildings, missing roof and wall sections, had to go in the name of economic development.

Specious as this case may be on the face, there was truth inside of it. City government ought to take measures within its powers to stabilize the surroundings of businesses and homeowners who have made significant investments. In this case, LCRA was the owner of the McPheeters warehouses, and held the duty to improve the buildings.

However, there is short-term enhancement and there is long-term enhancement. Charged with the public good, rather than merely carrying out the wishes of private parties, city government has the power to challenge economic logic when it serves a singular interest and when its execution would deprive broader economic and cultural benefit. In the case of the McPheeters warehouses, rehabilitation of the buildings would have been the greater good, and demolition the lowest. All that demolition did was provide instant gratification to a large and stable company that had already made its primary investment.

In this case, city government should have taken Pinnacle’s demand and raised it. LCRA could have spent comparable funds to demolition cost and used them to stabilize the western wall of the center warehouse, which had partly collapsed, and made some roof repairs to the rest of the complex. I doubt that the budget would have accomplished total stabilization, but it would have effectively mothballed them and prevented their loss.

Preservation would have been helpful to the developers and non-profit organizations that are trying to spark development in the North Riverfront Historic District. Preservation would have enhanced the scenic ride from the Arch grounds to the start of the north riverfront trail. Preservation would have allowed people to some day live or work right on the river, near downtown, the trail and even Lumiere Place. Preservation would have bridged the visual gap between Laclede’s Landing and the North Riverfront Historic District, abating the impact of Lumiere Place by making it seem less disruptive. Preservation would have kept the second-nature of building materials and embodied energy in place for eventual re-use. As we know, energy and materials are valuable through growing scarcity, and their conservation is both ecologically sound and economically smart.

Obviously, Pinnacle wanted short-term satisfaction for Lumiere Place managers and guests. City government could have balanced that desire with one encompassing the desires of others, the need to safeguard the city’s cultural resources and the need to enhance and spur future investment as well as safeguarding existing investment. In other words, city government could have brought planning into the discussion. Instead, it capitulated to one company’s short term desire, forever removing a development opportunity for other developers or even that company itself.

The photos below, taken during demolition, show that even the short-term effect of the demolition is not gain. While the buildings are gone, the sidewalks and streets around them are broken up, uneven and unsightly. Sidewalk and street repair here would bring public benefit, and do far more to make people think that the area is safe and healthy than demolition. I fail to see how any one’s long-term desires were met by LCRA’s decision to demolish the McPheeters warehouses.

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis Planning St. Louis Place

Big Picture View

by Michael R. Allen

This view is one of mt favorites in St. Louis Place. the view west toward St. Liborius church from Florissant Avenue is framed on the north side of Monroe Street by a row of lovely brick vernacular houses. I framed this shot to exclude the more troubling context across the street: empty lots, with vinyl-clad houses to the west. However, even in a broader view the beauty of this row, shining through decay of two of the buildings, and the church overpowers the unsightly surroundings.

However, the view is a fragile thing. The three-story Italianate style corner building built in 1876, an imposing building that is one of Florissant’s last corner anchors here, has suffered intense roof damage. Three years ago, the building retained a rusty but intact standing-seem metal roof. This was perhaps the last such roof in St. Louis Place or Old North, even though the metal roofs used to be common on buildings of many roof types. Then, in July 2006, heavy winds vitually peeled the roof back and removed a lot of the sheathing. The owner, a limited liability holding company called KGA Properties LLC, draped blue tarps across the hole. The tarps themselves were destroyed in a few months, and the building’s interior remains unprotected. What damage is transpiring would probably break a heart.

What is KGA Properties? This is a north side LLC name that is not part of any blogger litany. Well, the LLC’s registered agent is Delores Gunn, director of the St. Louis County Department of Health. Redevelopment efforts are stalled.

Next door to the west, a classic side-entrance, three-bay house at 1507 Monroe Street is owned by Paul McKee’s VHS Partners. People do know that three-letter LLC. Next door to the west is an owner-occupied home; beyond that, where Monroe bends, is a double house that is privately owned. We can see what those owners want to do with their historic homes — keep them occupied and maintained. The plans of their neighboring corporations remain uncertain. I’m sure that the owners of the occupied houses sigh each time they pass by the empty buildings next door.

The near north side is full of pockets like this one, with amazing historic architecture, some abandoned, surrounded by vacant land and new buildings. It’s the urban patchwork quilt few want to mend due to the difficulty of repair. Owner occupants hang on hoping for the best, while developers might also be hanging on in a different way, waiting for a political process in which redevelopment can happen. If the homeowners and the developers are both to be happy, we need leadership that represents the best interests of the near north side and its future to open the dialogue that will lead to redevelopment. Private interests get discussed a lot when people talk about the near north side, but what about the public interest?

There is more than just the future of individual owners and buildings at stake. After all, each of the buildings in the first photograph are privately owned, but they compose a lovely urban view free and accessible to all. Each homeowner is part of a neighborhood made of many people. Step back, and there is a big picture view of the near north side. I hope that our political leaders see it.