Category: Historic Preservation

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Abandonment Collapse Historic Preservation James Clemens House North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

Clemens House Chapel Suffers Localized Collapse

In a move unsurprising to long-time observers, a section of the roof and the eastern wall of the chapel wing at the James Clemens House collapsed in heavy rains yesterday. The collapse took down a section of roof that was sagging severely in recent months and three bays of the east wall above the first floor. The section that collapsed ran between two interior partitions that prevented further roof damage by supporting additional weight and tying the side walls together.

The roof had demonstrated severe local failure, and the western wall had substantially bowed outward in just the least year under pressure from the failing roof trusses. Recent observation showed imminent failure.

However, the chapel shows few signs of further immediate danger. The Building Division may swoop in soon to demolish the chapel, but that would be hasty. Here’s why:

  • The collapse was localized. The roof trusses run the width of the chapel, not the length, so the loss of those that fell yesterday does not necessarily mean others will fail.
  • Adjacent wall and roof sections seem fair. While the roof is in poor condition, the worst parts were those lost. The masonry walls and foundation, on the other hand, show excellent pointing and soundness. The wall section that collapsed did so because the roof pushed it out, not because the wall itself was inherently deficient.

    Built in 1896, the chapel was designed by Carondelet resident Aloysius Gillick, architect of several other Archdiocese buildings including the 1889 St. Mary’s Infirmary. The Sisters of St. Joseph built the chapel after taking ownership of the Clemens House earlier, in 1888. The front-gabled brick building features red sandstone ornament and sills, an ornate front porch and a high body visible from long distances to the east and north. The chapel itself is located on the second floor, and featured a suspended vaulted ceiling (mostly collapsed). The ornate marble altar and stained glass windows are both nearly completely missing.

    Still, preservation of the chapel is important in retaining the historic integrity of the complex. The current configuration reflects the House’s years of religious service rather than its original mansion life, and any restoration should retain the evolved form to show the layers of historic presence.

    Now is the time for the owner of the Clemens House, Paul McKee, to come forward and announce his intention. Inaction will mean certain loss of the chapel and further deterioration of the Clemens House buildings. Immediate stabilization should commence. If McKee is unwilling to do that, he should say so and offer others a chance.

    Television stations KSDK and KTVI (oddly speculating that the chapel was a cathedral) covered the collapse.

    • Categories
    Historic Preservation James Clemens House Metal Theft North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

    Blairmont Secures Clemens House During Historic Preservation Week

    by Michael R. Allen

    Blairmont Associates celebrated Historic Preservation Week with the belated action of securing the James Clemens, Jr. House at 1849 Cass Avenue in St. Louis Place. According yo a KMOX radio news report, Blairmont parent company McEagle Properties claims that the Clemens House is under contract to another owner and the work is being done as part of the sale.

    The house has sat unsecured for the better part of the last year, with even the front door wide open and unboarded in recent months. Many parts of the building have disappeared in recent years, and during the recent unsecured period millwork began to leave the house.

    On Wednesday, May 14, Blairmont had a crew at the site, cutting and affixing fresh plywood for the numerous unboarded windows and doors as well as bricking in a hole in the rear wall of the dormitory wing. (The masonry repair used an incorrect mortar mix for the historic masonry.)

    Other work included building a chain link fence across the open front entrance in the brick wall along Cass Avenue, where an iron gate once hung.


    The workers did not remove the numerous trees growing out of the original house’s upper floors, not did they take any action to remove collapsed brickwork from the roof and attic of the house. Bricks falling from the taller dormitory have caused significant damage to the house’s northwest corner, collapsing roof joists and causing the third floor to sag. The chapel wing’s condition is severe, with the west wall bowing outward due to ongoing roof collapse.

    Meanwhile, the cast iron portico on the house continues to lean away from the house, causing the limestone porch walls to shift with it. The painted sandstone entrance surround and porch on the chapel is eroding badly.

    During the work, the city’s Building Division came and issued a stop work order. Oddly, Blairmont did not have a building permit for any of the work. While the law is the law, it’s hard to want to stop any step Blairmont is actually taking to secure one of the city’s most important and most endangered landmarks.

    Categories
    Central West End Historic Preservation Preservation Board

    Threatened Central West End Building For Sale on CraigsList

    by Michael R. Allen

    Community Baptist Church has posted a CraigsList ad for the building at 4477 Olive Street, subject of discussion at last month’s Preservation Board meeting where the board considered demolition on preliminary review. The neighboring Youth Technology Education Center (YTEC) is seeking demolition for expansion of its facility, but does not own the building. The board voted to defer the matter for two months to allow the Central West End Association, YTEC and the church to explore alternative plans including preservation of the former laundry building.

    The ad states that the asking price is $250,000.

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    Events Historic Preservation Soulard South St. Louis

    Saturday: Tour of South Soulard and DeMenil House, Big Book Sale

    The Rehabbers Club brings you an exciting Saturday:

    Saturday, May 17
    9:30 a.m.
    Start at 900 Utah Street

    This month’s meeting focuses on south Soulard and eastern Benton Park/Marine Villa, historically part of the same development pattern but separated by the construction
    of I-55.

    Meet at 9:30 a.m. at 900 Utah (at S. 9th Street, south of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery). We will visit Ray and Maureen Kenski and hear about their long road to opening up a B&B in this gut-rehabbed former multi-family building. It’s one of several buildings in the area recently rehabbed by local developer Kraig Schnitzmeier. His project across the street at 3306 S. 9th just won one of Landmarks Association’s Eleven Most Enhanced Awards, and we’ll have the opportunity to hear Kraig talk about the transformation of this derelict property into a
    stunning home.

    3306 S. 9th Street. Photo courtesy of Kraig Schnitzmeier.
    Our next stop will be a special Preservation Week visit to the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion (open to us at no charge). DeMenil board member Bill Hart will tell the story of the dramatic rescue and restoration of the mansion 40 years ago and give a special tour highlighting its ongoing rehabilitation challenges. We’ll also have the opportunity to view rarely seen photographs of the blocks to the east, demolished for I-55, which demonstrate the continuity of the urban grid before the neighborhood were severed by highway construction.

    Our final stop on the tour will be “The Simon Complex”, as it is sometimes called, on the 1900 block of Cherokee Street. Ray Simon’s project started in the late 1980s and continues today, in the process creating a shaded, secluded courtyard shared by businesses and residents of the antebellum front buildings and the 1890s alley house. This type of semi-private space was once common in the City, but prohibitions against alley dwellings reduced their number considerably. The mix of commercial and residential uses, private and shared space is uniquely urban and
    completely magical. Don’t miss it.

    The final stop is also (by no coincidence) the site of the Rehabbers Club Used Book Sale, which benefits the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion. This year we have a strong collection of books including rehabbing, architecture, local interest, gardening, decorating, and tons of fiction. There are also many really nice supplies (mostly of the handled flex-file variety) for your home office. If you can’t make the tour, stop by the sale at 1912 Cherokee from 10-4 Saturday or 12-4 Sunday.

    Categories
    Architecture Downtown Historic Preservation Housing

    Building Recycling

    by Michael R. Allen

    My latest KWMU commentary celebrates the conversion of the former Days Inn at Tucker & Washington into the Washington Avenue Apartments. Transcript and audio is online here.

    Categories
    Events Historic Preservation

    Preservation Week Begins This Friday

    Landmarks Association of St. Louis kicks off this year’s Preservation Week on Friday with a ribbon cutting at 3:30 p.m. LoftWorks’ Ludwig Lofts at 1004-6 Olive Street downtown. This event includes an open house until 6:00 p.m. From there, the week progresses with house tours in old North St. Louis, Skinker-DeBalivere and the Central West End; a walking tour in St. Louis Place led by yours truly; the Eleven Most Enhanced Places awards ceremony; bowling at Saratoga Lanes; a trivia night hosted by Patrick Murphy; a book sale to benefit the Chatillon-DeMenil House; and more.

    I will feature some of the events here, but the full calendar is available on Landmarks’ website.

    Categories
    Architecture Historic Preservation LRA North St. Louis St. Louis Place

    Passage of a Block Face: 1900 St. Louis Avenue, North Face

    by Michael R. Allen

    Following the trail from the recently-demolished house at 1951 St. Louis Avenue, let’s examine the rest of the block two years ago. Here were the thee buildings east of that house.

    At the left, see a very stately Italianate single-family home. In the center is a brick tenement, with thew front wall painted and a likely mansard roof destroyed by fire; this building was razed in 2007. Both buildings were owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. These represent common styles and forms for the 1880s. The building at the right is an apartment building that is occupied to this day. This building demonstrates the near north side architectural sensibility of the 1890s — the mansard roof form remains, but it is divided by a prominent brick dormer. The cornice is brick, not wood, and the entrance is formed by a generously wide Roman arch.

    The Italianate home today stands vacant, and the east wall of the rear ell is starting to lose bricks fast.

    Anchoring the block faces eastern end is another 1890s building, a solid three-story storefront building housing Fleetwood and Son’s. Behind the sleek modern vitrolite facade is one of the north side’s coolest bars. (Warning: Fleetwood’s is a 30-and-over establishment, so young punks should hang elsewhere.)

    A 1909 Sanborn fire insurance map shows eight buildings on this (north) side of the 1900 block of St. Louis Avenue. Three of these, long gone, were large buildings. Just west of Fleetwood’s stood the North Branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Between the house at the other corner and that Italianate house were St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church and a large mansion enjoying a generous side yard between it and the church.


    The 1964 Sanborn fire insurance map shows that the North Branch and the mansion were gone. The Romanesque Revival St. Paul’s, which had been built in 1902 and designed by Matthews & Clarke, survived until 1998 when it was senselessly demolished by its owner (LRA).

    Last year, all of the remaining buildings on the north side of this block (across the alley) were decimated by brick thieves operating with rapacious precision. This spring, those damaged buildings came down. What does the future hold for this block?

    The Italianate house seems destined for demolition next. (May that not be the case.) The apartment building and Fleetwood’s, though, are going to be around for a long time to come. What fills in around them is anyone’s guess. Will it be new homes or shops that express the sense of place that the fallen buildings did? That depends on what our sense of this place is when we building — or, more likely, the sense of who does the building and who delivers a vision for rebuilding St. Louis Place to that builder.

    It’s easy to shudder at the prospect. After all, the current sense of St. Louis Place held by many is confused and beneath the dignity of the neighborhood’s generations of residents, past and present. Once a certain sense emerges, rebuilding will lead to a block face as engaged in the values of its age as this block face once was. Although we have seen tragic loss of this block, let us not neglect to lay out the blueprints for a rebuilding that will honor our heritage.

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

    The House at 20th and St. Louis

    by Michael R. Allen

    We shall never again see this beautiful house at the northeast corner of 20th Street and St. Louis Avenue in St. Louis Place, just north of the boundary of the Clemens House-Columbia Brewery National Historic District. Wreckers took down the house last week as part of a city demolition package. The house had fallen on hard times. Vacant for years, the house lost its roof through collapse and sections of the western wall were beginning to collapse inward. Its owner was an elderly man who lived in the ruins; he was apparently on a bus downtown to try to stop the demolition when the wreckers started their work. The home was mostly gone when he returned.

    Nonetheless, the beauty shone through the devastation. This was one of the few early large corner houses on St. Louis Avenue. Notice the shallow setback from St. Louis Avenue and the lack of any setback at all from 20th Street. Originally a single-family home possessing the same grandeur of its peers on the avenue, the house is resolutely urban in character. St. Louis Place had an order of fine houses, and homes on St. Louis Avenue were more prosaic than the slightly more expensive ones that lined both sides of the St. Louis Place park. Hence this house balances the expression of wealth its owners intended with a conventional placement of the home typical of the street. No one could have expected seclusion on a main thoroughfare.

    What was most striking about the home was its intact features. Although derelict, the house was never painted and kept its wooden windows, the cornice, dormer, slate shingles and even its roof cresting. The eclectic mix of Second Empire and Italianate features was restrained by the purity of expression typical of its time (likely the early 1880s). The front wall was brick, the lintels simple stone arches. There was little pretense despite its stylistic impurity.

    Standing vacant, the home was almost frozen in time. While the home remained immobile, the forces of water, gravity and time moved forward against the house.

    Categories
    Central West End Demolition Flounder House Historic Preservation North St. Louis Preservation Board South St. Louis The Ville Tower Grove East

    Preservation Board Approves Flounder House Demolition, Denies Demolition in The Ville

    by Michael R. Allen

    Here’s a quick report of some actions at yesterday’s St. Louis Preservation Board meeting.

    2915 Minnesota Avenue: Preliminary approval for demolition of flounder house granted 4-2. Terry Kennedy, Mary Johnson, David Richardson and Anthony Robinson in favor; Melanie Fathman and Mike Killeen opposed.

    4477 Olive Street: Unanimously deferred until the July meeting to provide more time to explore alternatives.

    4568 St. Ferdinand Avenue: Demolition permit denied 4-3. Killeen, Fathman, Robinson and Richard Callow in favor of motion to deny; Johnson, Kennedy and Richardson opposed.

    Categories
    Demolition Flounder House Historic Preservation Housing Preservation Board South St. Louis Tower Grove East

    Fate of Flounder House on Monday’s Preservation Board Agenda

    by Michael R. Allen

    On Monday, the Preservation Board will determine the fate of this old city-owned flounder house at 2915 Minnesota Avenue in Tower Grove East. The 710-square-foot home lies outside of the boundaries of the Tower Grove Heights Historic District, making it ineligible for rehab tax credits without landmark designation. Clearly, the building is eligible in its own right — there are fewer than 30 flounder houses left in the city, and the building type is indigenous. Alderwoman Kacie Starr Triplett (D-6th) is seeking demolition, while the Tower Grove East Neighborhood Association strongly opposes demolition. Triplett’s application was deferred by the Board two months ago to provide the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) time to develop a pro forma showing that rehabilitation is feasible.

    Working with developer Will Libermann, who recently rehabbed a flounder house at 3330 Missouri Avenue in Benton Park, CRO has arrived at an impressively economical budget; see its report here. Liebermann’s plan would restore the derelict home to former beauty while creating badly-needed affordable fully-rehabbed, historically-sensitive housing. (His other flounder sold for $125,000.) With the neighborhood behind preservation, there should be a clear outcome but Triplett remains stridently in favor of demolition.

    Should the Preservation Board approve demolition, there would be yet another decision creating a housing gap between upper-income residents who can afford fully-rehabbed historically-sensitive homes and lower-income residents who largely cannot. Here is the rare opportunity to cut against the gap. While the home is smaller than your average multi-family conversion, it is a great size for a single person or a childless couple.

    The Preservation Board meets Monday, April 28 at 4:00 p.m. in the 12th floor conference room at 1015 Locust Street downtown. See the full agenda here.