Category: Historic Preservation

Categories
Historic Preservation Metro East

Barn Raising in Collinsville Starts Today

Starting today, the Timber Framers Guild will partner with the Collinsville Illinois Area Recreation District (CARD) and Trillium Dell Timberworks in a project to repair and re-assemble the historic 36′ x 85′ Gindler Barn at a TFG workshop running through July 19 at Willoughby Farm, Collinsville, Illinois.

The 19th century Gindler Barn was donated to CARD in 2007; it will be the second restored barn to be re-erected at Willoughby Farm. CARD oversees more than 400 acres of parkland and provides recreational programs and special events for the community. As part of this program, CARD purchased the 40-acre Willoughby Farm, a community fixture in the Collinsville area since the 1900s and one of the last significant tracts of open space along the Collinsville bluff line.

CARD plans to make Willoughby Farm into a living history farmstead and a real working Midwestern farm as it was in the 1920s to 1950s. Another goal is for visitors to gain appreciation for the outdoors while hiking or strolling on interpretive trails in the conservation area. The farm area is 10 acres and the conservation reserve area is 30 acres. Willoughby Farm will also demonstrate and promote sustainability practices of the era and how those same values can play a significant role in protecting the environmental investments of our present and future.

Willoughby Farm is located on a secluded hilltop farmstead 15 miles northeast of St. Louis.

More information is online here.

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

Another Lost Corner in St. Louis Place

by Michael R. Allen

In March, I wrote about the tragic loss of an entire block of buildings in St. Louis Place due to brick rustling. Many of the houses on the 1900 block of Wright Street between Florissant Avenue and North 20th Street were owned by Paul J. McKee, Jr., but three were owned by others. (See “Brick Rustlers Decimate Wright Street Block,” March 26, 2008.) Two buildings comprising a magnificent row had been the property of DHP Investments, the failed company led by Doug Hartmann that left over 120 historic city buildings in various states of abandonment, including the landmark Nord St. Louis Turnverein. Hartmann’s buildings here were imposing three-story buildings with elegant masonry details, mansard roofs punctuated by squared dormers and even intact cast iron balconies.

Missing from my earlier coverages was mention of a row that stood across the alley on Dodier Street until this February. The two buildings at 1944-50 Dodier Street were not as exotic as their neighbors to the south, but they were every much as responsible for creating the sense of place for the neighborhood. The best part of these two buildings was their relationship: the eastern tenement building was wide and set back from the street, while its conjoined neighbor with commercial space came right up to the sidewalks on both Dodier and 20th streets. This pair beautifully demonstrated the order or urban space as it recedes from the public sphere to the semi-private. Here, the public was that which is immediate to the right-of-way, while the semi-private was removed just enough to mark the boundary between residents and passers-by. Both buildings were completely urban.

The details were also lovely. The tenement’s brick dormers pack a punch not found in the small belt courses and elegant but typical stone sills. Next door, a corbelled cornice, central dormer and vivid stone keystones give a plain brick wall pizazz. The details are common for vernacular buildings of the 1880s and 1890s, when these were built. While the rarity of such buildings and their details makes them more precious, their historic commonality provides the real significance. There was a time when such finesse was a matter of course even in working class housing.

Alas, these buildings fell into the hands of the city’s Land Reutilization Authority by the 1970s, and were vacant for awhile before Victor Casine (whose ownership of another building recently was profiled in the Vital Voice) purchased them in 1982. Casine promised rehabilitation, but did little other than allow further deterioration. The city’s Building Division reported the buildings as vacant for every year that Casine owned them. Numerous citations led to one suit filed by the city against Casine. Casine himself sued the city in 1989 for supposedly damaging the property when the Forestry Division mowed the overgrowth Casine did not trim himself.

After three years in which Casine did not pay outstanding liens and taxes on the property, the Sheriff auctioned the houses in 2003. This time was on the cusp of McKee’s purchasing, and so the buildings found no bidder. The Land Reutilization Authority took title once more, and after the rear walls collapsed was granted emergency demolition by the Building Division in January 2008. And so it goes. Those new to following land speculation and demolition in St. Louis Place should know that the tragedy is not new and has never been closer to real solutions as it is now. A long time ago, buildings bit the dust without so much as a photograph taken and owners let property decay without a call to the alderman, let alone protests at City Hall. Now, there is relatively wide attention on the future of the neighborhood. From that attention could come action.

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Preservation Board

New Story at 4477 Olive

by Michael R. Allen

The graceful commercial building at 4477 Olive Street in the Central West End may be getting a reprieve. In April, the Preservation Board voted to defer for two months an application for demolition from the Youth Technology Education Center (YTEC) and the owner, Community Baptist Church. (See “Same Old Story?”, April 25.) At that meeting, representatives of the Central West End Association Planning and Development Committee testified against the application and agreed to meet with church pastor Willie Kent to see if a compromise was possible. The board was swayed by the spirit of negotiation, and unanimously voted to provide time for more talk.

As a bit of background, the section of Olive Street where 4477 Olive is located was excluded for the original boundaries of the Central West End Historic District due to ward boundaries. Subsequently, that end of the Central West End has been isolated — even physically, through barriers at Newstead and other places — from the neighborhood at large. Recent developments have led to a renewal and expansion of the historic district boundaries (which still cut across ward lines) to include the commercial district. Still, there is friction along ward lines between stakeholders in the different sections of the Central West End.

Most of that friction may come from lack of communication. With Kent, YTEC representatives and Central West End Association leaders at the table, a compromise that would preserve the building (most likely) or at least its front elevation is in the works. Things are going so well that YTEC sent the city’s Cultural Resources Office a memo asking that the matter be removed from the Preservation Board’s June agenda.

Due to procedural rules, however, the board had to take some action. At Monday’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to defer the matter indefinitely. Let’s hope the dialog between stakeholders is fruitful and that the lovely building is preserved while YTEC’s expansion occurs. When the demolition application surfaced, few would have predicted the matter would have been anything but another senseless case of parties talking past each other. Then again, common ground comes from common values — and all of these parties believe in the revitalization of Olive Street.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation LCRA Riverfront

Casino Claims Historic North Riverfront Warehouses

by Michael R. Allen


Nestled between two prominent landmarks, the glitzy new Lumiere Place casino complex and the venerable Ashley Street Power House, stands a group of warehouse buildings. These aren’t the most iconic buildings — certainly not amid such strong competition. Still, the street wall presence of three buildings on Leonor K. Sullivan Drive between Carr and Biddle ties together disparate sections of riverfront fabric.

That presence is about to disappear. In May, the city’s Preservation Board voted 3 to 2, approving demolition of the buildings. While the applicant was the city government, Lumiere Place owner Pinnacle Casinos was a forceful advocate for razing the historic warehouses.

The warehouses in question comprise a wide four-story brick building built in 1881, a modern addition to the south from 1946 and a long one-story stone building to the north built in 1883. The grouping is a little peculiar, but there’s a reason for the strange appearance.

Thomas McPheeters was on his way to becoming one of the West’s biggest storage magnates when he built the four-story center building in 1881. That building was used for warehousing dry goods, and its looks are not out of the ordinary for industrial St. Louis. Yet its northern neighbor is an odd one-story stone-faced building built by McPheeters in 1883. Early fire insurance maps state that this building was lined with cast iron, suggesting that this was a primitive cold storage warehouse. McPheeters continued to develop cold storage facilities, and in 1900 and 1901 built much larger brick cold storage warehouses a few blocks north of his earlier building. Eventually McPheeters’ company sold the earlier buildings to the Thompson Chemical Company, which added the south building in 1946 and used the buildings for production.

Concerning the immediate surroundings, many remaining buildings were wrecked for Lumiere Place but an impressive pocket to the north contains large buildings, including the Ashley Street and Laclede power houses and McPheeters’ later buildings. These buildings comprise the North Riverfront Historic District National Register of Historic Places, listed in 2002 in response to renewed interest in developing the area.

Unfortunately, the old McPheeters buildings were not able to be included because a 2001 fire (and demolition) at the old Belcher Sugar Refinery left the old McPheeters buildings too far from the district to qualify. Yet the buildings could still be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making historic rehabilitation tax credits available.

Unfortunately, that prospect will not come. The city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority (LCRA) purchased the buildings in 2003. LCRA’s name says it all – the agency exists to clear land for new projects like Lumiere Place. However, the original Lumiere Place redevelopment plan didn’t include the fine old warehouses, leaving open the possibility of reuse.

All three buildings are sound, and the city’s Cultural Resources Office has advised that none have conditions of unsoundness established under the city’s preservation review ordinance. Still, there are challenges here — but none even as big as building a multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art casino. The middle warehouse has lost a section of one wall, exposing part of the wooden post and beam structure. The roof is missing in places. These are the conditions one expects for vacant property of this age, and conditions that have become standard fare for St. Louis tax-credit-savvy developers.

Although I cannot profess much respect for the execution of the Lumiere Place architecture and site plan, I was hopeful that its presence would not be a huge intrusion into the historic fabric of our riverfront. While the casino is visually at odds with surrounding architecture, and its construction entailed demolition of historic fabric, its location is ideal for connecting Laclede’s Landing to the industrial buildings to the north. Pinnacle repeatedly discusses a second phase of Lumiere Place that will create much-needed housing on the riverfront.

Pinnacle could have made as bold of a move as it did with its new casino and included historic rehabilitation in its plans. Connecting the new development with the historic context would be cool and smart, demonstrating Pinnacle’s commitment to transcending the usual. Also, utilizing historic rehabilitation tax credit and unusual buildings would offer additional financing tools and create something more special than a new building. The bonus would be the impact of helping to draw development up into the North Riverfront Historic District.

Pinnacle and city development officials have touted Lumiere Place as a catalyst for spreading investment across the riverfront areas north of the Eads Bridge. The vision of a vibrant riverfront with residential space certainly is compelling. Then, at the Preservation Board we heard from St. Louis Development Corporation Deputy Director Otis Williams, who told us that Lumiere Place wanted the McPheeters warehouses torn down because their appearance was supposedly hurting casino revenue. There’s a mighty large gap between the promises of spreading investment and the self-contained concerns conveyed through Williams.

That’s a gap big enough to swallow three fine buildings, but hopefully not the larger vision of revitalizing this section of riverfront by sensitively connecting the fabric of Laclede’s Landing and the North Riverfront Historic District.

This article first appeared in the Vital Voice on June 13, 2008.

Categories
Central West End Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

San Luis Gets Website, Spot on Most Endangered List

by Michael R. Allen

There’s a new website called “Save the San Luis” — referring to the threatened San Luis Apartments at Lindell and Taylor in the Central West End — located at NoParkingLotonLindell.com.

Also, last weekend at its annual membership meeting, Landmarks Association announced that the San Luis was one of the additions to this year’s Eleven Most Endangered Places list.

Categories
Abandonment Demolition Flounder House Historic Preservation North St. Louis St. Louis Place

Two Blocks of Florissant Avenue in 1985

by Michael R. Allen

While demolition permit numbers show that the peak decade for material building loss in the Old North St. Louis and St. Louis Place neighborhoods was 1970-1980, a substantial slower loss has transpired since then. The cumulative result is that streetscapes recognizable as urban places twenty-five years ago now form desolate landscapes lacking architectural definition.

Two photographs of the west side of Florissant Avenue in 1985 taken by Mary M. Stiritz for Landmarks Association of St. Louis depict the absurd reality that in the near past, the eastern edge of St. Louis Place was marked by the familiar nineteenth century vernacular masonry buildings that typify other sections to this day.

Nowadays, Florissant Avenue is a confused corridor notable for its many vacant lots and the needless wide expanse of roadway that awaits MetroLink expansion. This area was once a vital part of a beautiful neighborhood. In 1985, Landmarks was preparing a survey leading to expansion of the Clemens House-Columbia Brewery Historic District; sufficient physical stock existed here to allow major expansion of a national historic district. Today, further expansion remains a fantasy at best due to continued loss.

Behold the northwest corner of Warren Street and Florissant Avenue, today a sun-scorched vacant lot:

While the architectural context is visibly diminished, the important corner site is occupied by a building that becomes a landmark heralding the site as one for human comfort and exchange. As we rebuild St. Louis Place, we should ensure we have good corners, and not drive-through lanes, curb cuts and fences where the marks of human settlement should be.

The second photograph shows the block of Florissant between North Market Street on the south and Benton Street on the north:

Here was a hybrid row of commercial and residential buildings, all brick but differing somewhat on setback, height and style. There are a few side-gabled buildings, with a mansard-roofed store second in from the corner adjacent to a flounder house with a generous side gallery porch. Dormers abound. There’s even a modern Payless Shoe Store at the right of the image. This is a resolutely urban group, friendly to the pedestrian and attractive to the eye.

All of these buildings are now gone.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation Midtown

Locust Street Building Demolished

by Michael R. Allen


A few people have asked me about the current demolition of a building at 3126 Locust Street in the Locust Business District just east of Compton Avenue.

The building being demolished unfortunately could not be included in a recent Locust Street Automobile Row Historic District extension due to heavy alterations. While remaining sections of the building show a Spanish Revival facade of stucco and brick, the building was clad in metal paneling until very recently. The installation of the panels damaged the facade, and the owner — Scott Pohlman, who developed the residential building next door to the east — elected to demolish the building and build a new residential structure on the site.

In 1888, this was the site of the new First Christian Church building. The present building sections date to 1913 and 1919. A 1919 city directory shows Gill Piston Ring Company and Standard Roller Bearing as tenants. The tenant listing is not surprising; “Automobile Row” on Locus included perhaps more parts manufacturers and distributors than automobile dealers and distributors. Companies like these made St. Louis the “Second Detroit” (almost first).

While 3126 Locust may have been salvaged, and I think it could have been, at least there is a redevelopment plan leading to a beneficial trade-off. There have been too many parking lots added in recent years, especially by St. Louis University — which makes no secret that parking, not development, is its end goal.

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis St. Louis Place

Cass Avenue Bank Building Survives

by Michael R. Allen


The Cass Avenue Bank building has improbably survived the destruction that has erased most traces of the Cass Avenue commercial district. Now held by trustee Marilyn Kocher, the building seems to be used for storage although the city Building Division considers it a vacant building. Yet while its graceful lines are broken by filled-in window and door openings, the building is pretty stable. There is not the typical decay one finds with a vacant building on the near north side. Note what a difference a thorough mothballing makes: roll-up doors, steel grates and fully-boarded openings present a formidable front to trespassers.

The Classical Revival bank building dates to a $15,000 building permit taken out by Cass Avenue Bank on February 24, 1914. The architectural firm chosen was the short-lived partnership of Wedemeyer & Stiegmeyer, while Bothe-Welsch Construction Company as contractor. As a life-long resident of north St. Louis, William Wedemeyer was no stranger to the area — or to neighborhood anchors. Wedemeyer’s career includes other banks, including the now-demolished Northwestern Savings Bank at St. Louis and Florissant avenues and the still-standing Lindell Trust Company at Grand and St. Louis avenues. Wedemeyer also designed the 1923 alterations to St. Stanislaus Kostka School, which is almost fully demolished as of this writing.

Of all of Wedemeyer’s work, though, the Cass Avenue Bank reminds me most of the Casa Loma Ballroom, built in 1926 but severely damaged by fire and rebuilt in 1940. Although the skin and insides were replaced, the form was not. Where the Casa Loma presents its curved corner to the intersection of Cherokee and Iowa Streets, it echoes this earlier work.

Here, the brick body of the bank breaks for a recessed chamfered entrance that is flanked by smooth polished granite columns. Above, the white terra cotta cornice forms a curve that hangs over the entrance. The effect isn’t architecturally rare, but it sure is wonderful. Rather than break the street line with a lawn or set back, the bank announces its presence with a commanding cut-off corner that allows for elegant entrance without breaking the street walls on either Cass or 15th Street. The word “urbane” exists for such architectural gestures.

The rest of the building matches the corner, too, with the striking contrast between the oh-so-white terra cotta and dark brick. There are medallions bearing the bank emblem as well as the common seal of the City of St. Louis. The terra cotta side entrance on 15th Street is quietly elegant as well.

Next door, a storefront building owned by the Land also built in 1915 carries the roof line but bears the result of a 1950 re-facing. This building was first a shop and later a club owned by another nearby bank, Pulaski Savings and Loan (read about the recent loss of its home here). In 1927, Cass Avenue Bank moved eastward to the large majestic building at Florissant and Cass now used as the Greyhound Station. The city was growing fast right before the Depression, and banks were at the forefront. The United States Postal Service occupied the building at 15th and Cass for many years, but it’s been vacant since the 1980s.

Across the street from the old bank building are the O’Fallon Place apartments. Yet much of the rest of this area, especially to the north and east, has been wrecked. First, starting right before World War II and going through the 1960s, trucking companies bought up large parts of this area for cheap, knocking down shops and tenements for transfer facilities and yards. Then the trucking companies moved out, and their facilities started coming down.

It’s clear this stretch of Cass Avenue is due for redevelopment. The new Mississippi River Bridge will have its major off-ramp into downtown come out onto Cass just east of Florissant Avenue. The street is bound to get a new life, and hopefully one that is as healthy as the one it once had.
Consideration should be given to survivors like the two Cass Bank buildings, each of which is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. They are building blocks for new mixed-use development — reminders of the past that can be part of the future of this great street.


(More information: Built St. Louis)

Categories
Architecture Historic Preservation Illinois Southern Illinois

A Mesker Storefront in Crossville

by Michael R. Allen


En route to the Storefronts of America: The Mesker Story exhibit at the Evansville Museum in Indiana, I happened upon a fine example of a Mesker front in Crossville, Illinois. Actually, this was no real happenstance. I pretty much figure I’ll see at least one Mesker in any small town I encounter in southern or central Illinois.

Now famous due to the efforts of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency’s Got Mesker? project, the Mesker storefronts are the work of two foundries within one family. George L. Mesker & Company operated in Evansville, Indiana while Mesker Brothers Iron Works operated in St. Louis. Both companies produced mass-manufactured iron building parts ranging from cast iron columns to sheet metal facades from the 1870s through the 1920s. Builders ordered parts or whole facades (easiest to identify) from catalogs to economically beautify commercial fronts in small towns and big cities alike.

This particular storefront is the work of George L. Mesker & Company. Acanthus-topped solid cast iron columns support a brick front wall hidden under sheet metal. The sheet metal is cored to resemble concrete blocks, and is adorned with continuous foliage-inspired elements at the window surrounds, above the storefront, above the second floor windows and at the cornice line.

Akin to the ornament of Louis Sullivan, the Mesker work references prairie nature. Classical details are minimal, while abstract and direct natural patterns dominate the composition. The belts of vines emphasize the horizontal nature of the wide front, echoing the rugged flat land of southeastern Illinois. Yet the metal front is obviously a modern thing — at least, it was distinctly modern for its time. The design draws together the eager commercial of spirit mass manufacturing (sheet metal ordered by mail, near-uniform concrete blocks) with romantic tinges of natural beauty (conjuring infinite variety and difference).


These fine lines remain a testament to the once-promising outlook of the small towns of the Midwest. The Mesker front in Crossville isn’t a Waiwright Building or a Rookery, but it somehow seems as much a true expression of time, place and modernity as those progressive urban buildings. The storefront building seemed vacant, and the sheet metal was peeling back on one end to reveal backing lath over the plain brick body of the building.

Yet the front is essentially good repair, retaining almost every original piece — the end columns on the storefront probably weren’t originally bare brick — and even its original window sash. There’s only a bit of rust. The building offers itself as a worthy part of the future of Crossville, whatever that may be.

Categories
Central West End DeVille Motor Hotel Historic Preservation Missouri Mullanphy Emigrant Home Old North St. Louis County

Missouri Preservation’s Most Endangered List Includes Three St. Louis Buildings

by Michael R. Allen


Yesterday Missouri Preservation unveiled its 2008 Most Endangered Historic Places list (follow link for full list with information). President Jeff Brambila, pictured above, announced that the Mullanphy Emigrant Home in St. Louis was being held over from last year due to continued financial needs of the stabilization project. A new foundation and new block inside walls for the south and east sides of the building are complete, but the block work on the north wall, a new roof and brick exterior facing all remain to be started. The Mullanphy is not safe yet.


Also on this year’s list due to financial needs of repair is Fairfax, where the list was announced. Located on Manchester Road in Rock Hill, Fairfax is a minimally-detailed Greek Revival home built by James Collier Marshall in 1841. Out of tune with its auto-centric surroundings, the home was already moved twice to escape demolition. The owner is the City of Rock Hill, which lacks funds to repair the building. Those in attendance at the press conference saw the high level of disrepair on the interior, where holes abound in the plaster walls and ceilings and the original wooden floors are covered with decaying vinyl flooring.

A third St. Louis are building on this year’s list is the DeVille Motor Hotel at 4483 Lindell Boulevard in the city’s Central West End. The modernist motor lodge is an elegant relic of urban renewal era, showing a sensitivity to site and neighborhood context rare for its period. Seems to this writer that the stark modernism of the DeVille shares at least a stylistic tendency with the much-earlier Greek Revival lines of Fairfax. Currently, the St. Louis Archdiocese continues to plan demolition of the hotel for a surface parking lot.

Missouri Preservation went beyond the endangered list and also announced a “watch list” of buildings from previous year’s lists still facing an uncertain future.