Preservation Research OfficeFrom an ad on CraigsList posted in the “materials” section:
1860’s Missouri Log Cabin, dismantled, tagged and diagrammed for sale. Pictures available by request. Original cabin 15X16 with an addition of 15X16, all log. Please respond to judy249@centurytel.net
by Michael R. Allen
Meet the building at 2817 N. 14th Street. This is the sort of buildings that many preservationists would hem and haw about when asked if it would be expendable to redevelopment. This is the sort of building that many Old North St. Louis residents would defend to the moment before the bulldozer arrived.
This 1860s-era row house has some noticeable problems. It’s owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. The front wall is bulged outward, necessitating the bracing that was installed only recently. The roof is sagging inward. Bricks routinely fall from its parapets. The interior is barely recognizable as anything other than a tangle of water-damaged wood. The floors have collapsed, and the walls have descended.
Yet the building still shows its elegant Greek Revival brickwork. Simple segmental arches are repeated over the windows and doorway. A dentillated brick cornice creates a stately crown to the front elevation. The front-gabled roof draws the passer-by’s eye upwards to a small dormer. Long ago, chimneys would have provided more visual interest at the roof.
This building demonstrates the craftsmanship of vernacular architecture from an era with relatively little traces. How can Old North St. Louis tell its story to future generations without it? The neighborhood is unwilling to try.
This building joins over 25 other historic buildings to form the $32 million “Crown Square” project in Old North. This project is spearheaded by the Old North St. Louis Restoration group and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance — a neighborhood group and a not-for-profit. These are organizations whose missions allow them to take the risk to tell the neighborhood’s story. These are organizations acting long ahead of any moment at which a private developer would dare spend $32 million in Old North. If that day comes, the developer spending that money may own a building like this one. That developer may look for a precedent on how to handle the thorny question of what to do with a half-collapsed old brick tenement.
By then, projects like Crown Village and the investment of the community in its history will set a pretty strong precedent for doing the right thing. The right thing here is to safeguard the traces of a community’s heritage that will inform future generations who will live inside and alongside historic buildings in Old North.
by Michael R. Allen
Photo from What’s New in Old North.
Old North St. Louis has made a big step in the effort to stabilize the imperiled Mullanphy Emigrant Home. The foundation of the south wall of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home is in the midst of reconstruction this week. Once the foundation work is completed, masons can begin laying the block that will form the new inner wythes of the walls; face brick will come later. Hopefully by winter’s onset the roof of the building will be supported by masonry walls.
Remember that the greater the progress made, the greater the cost. The effort to stabilize the landmark continues to seek donations.
More from What’s New in Old North: Mullanphy Foundation Begins to Rise
by Michael R. Allen
Paul Hohmann reports that the city Building Division has granted an emergency demolition order for the Central Apartments at 3727 Olive Street in Midtown.
The building is owned by Grand Center, Inc. Brick spalling has beset the western wall for the past three years, and the owner has not performed preventative maintenance despite obvious trouble. Still, the Central Apartments are structurally sound in fact and under the terms of the city’s Preservation Ordinance, which stipulates that the building must be stable enough to stand for at least another six months to be deemed stable. Clearly, there is no emergency here.
by Michael R. Allen
Photograph by author.
At last week’s meeting of the Preservation Board, the board considered the appeal of a Cultural Resources Office Staff denial of an application for demolition of a two-story commercial building downtown located at 2217-19 Olive Street. The board unanimously upheld the denial.
The owners of the building, Gary and Gail Andrews, have owned the building since 1977 but have failed to maintain the building according to city building codes. A section of the roof of the building collapsed several years ago, causing parapet damage, but the building is stable. The owners seek to to demolish the building, replacing it with a lawn and eventually a surface parking lot to serve a building that they own at 2206 Locust Street. (Read the CRO report here.)
The building is a contributing resource to a pending national historic district, the Olive and Locust Historic Business District. The nomination is awaiting final approval from the National Park Service. According to the nomination, prepared by Melinda Winchester:
The residential character of both Olive and Locust easily gave way to commercial activity, as many people converted homes into first floor shops with apartments above. An example of this is the building at 2217 Olive. Constructed as a home for Margaret Hilton in 1888, the first floor was converted into Walter C. Persons Photo Supplies Company in 1929 by William Duerback.
Examples of such conversion on Olive and Locust east of Jefferson are nearly extinct. The nomination does not identify a single other example of the converted residence within the historic district boundaries.
Once the building is listed on the National Register as part of the district, its rehabilitation will be eligible for state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits. This building and others on the block have not been eligible for the tax credits before. With the availability of the credit, these buildings should be attractive investments.
I concur with Cultural Resources staff that replacement of a historic downtown building with a grassy lot substitutes a high land use with an inappropriately low land use.
by Michael R. Allen
Welcome to the Pelster Housebarn, an architectural marvel located in Franklin County, Missouri west of Washington. The housebarn was probably built around the Civil War by William Pelster, a German immigrant. Pelster had already built and occupied a log home nearby. Pelster’s decision to build a housebarn was unusual. Typically the housebarn, which literally combined a farm’s house and barn under one roof, was a transitional structure for recent immgrants who went on to build freestanding homes.
Housebarns were most prevalent in the Midwest and Great Plains. Only twelve remain in the United States. The Pelster housebarn features a tall gabled roof over a fachwerk structure. The fachwerk here combines a structure of pegged rough-hewn timbers filled in with fieldstone. The exterior is clad in clapboard, but some of the walls are exposed in the barn. The housebarn rests on a fieldstone foundation.
The large entrance at the Pelster Housebarn opens onto the threshing floor, reputed to have never been used for its intended purpose. Off of the threshing floor are a granary and creamery. The living quarters were located to the left of the entrance, with a separate entrance off of the porch (restored last year) but with an open staircase in the barn section leading to the second floor sleeping quarters. Livestock was kept on the lower level, accessed through entrances at each gable end. The lower level also housed a fruit cellar. Above the threshing floor was a hayloft.
In 1978, the housebarn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After ownership by the Missouri Heritage Trust (now Missouri Preservation), the Pelster Housebarn became property of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which is unable to enter the property into the state park system.
Restoration work is thus funded privately, and the Friends of the Pelster Housebarn has been chartered to raise funds for ongoing work. More information about their effort is available here.
Last year’s porch project was a substantial undertaking. More work is needed, including replacement of the non-original tin roof, which is in poor repair.
Photographs by Lynn Josse.
St. Louis has sent an application for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2008 List of America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations. Read more at MayorSlay.com.
by Michael R. Allen
UPDATED Monday, Sepetmber 24.
Three applications for demolition are on the final agenda for Monday’s meeting of the St. Louis Preservation Board. The permit applications are:
– 2868 Missouri Avenue in Benton Park (national and local historic district), owned by Craig Hamby & Brian Magill. A two-story corner commercial building, located across the street from the restaurant Yemanja Brasil, mostly collapsed last year. An adjacent building is stable, but the owner seeks to demolish it too. Application includes new construction.
– 4153 (owned by James and Betty Mitchell) and 4220-22 Martin Luther King Drive (owned by LRA) and 4224 Martin Luther King Drive (owned by Tommie Hampton) in The Ville. The buildings on Martin Luther King are brick commercial buildings. The building at 4222 Martin Luther King collapsed last month, perhaps causing damage to its neighbors.
There is one appeal of a staff denials:
– 2217-19 Olive Street downtown, owned by Gary and Gail Andrews. This is a two-story, flat-roofed brick commercial structure.
The meeting begins at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, September 24, on the twelfth floor of the office building at 1015 Locust Street.
Florissant house added to National Register – Brian Flinchpaugh (North County Journal, September 17)
Demolition of Old MFA Feed Store Will Begin Monday – Sarah Wienke (Washington Missourian, September 14)
A former lumber mill built in 1865 and located in Washington, Missouri will meet its end starting Monday — but there’s a small silver lining. The owner of the building, most recently used a feed store, plans to salvage every part of the building that he can.
Thanks to Richard Callow for the link.