Category: Mid-Century Modern

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

Missouri Court of Appeals to Hear San Luis Appeal Tomorrow

by Michael R. Allen

Demonstrating against the San Luis demolition, June 2009.
Tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals hears oral arguments in Friends of the San Luis v. the Archdiocese of St. Louis. The court meets on the third floor of the Old Post Office downtown, and supporters of the Friends of the San Luis are invited to attend. The Court of Appeals will issue its ruling later.

What is happening? After the Preservation Board approved by a thin 3-2 margin a preliminary application for demolition in June 2009, the Friends of the San Luis (disclaimer: I serve as the organization’s president) filed a petition for injunction to halt the demolition of the mid-century modern San Luis Apartments (originally the DeVille Motor Hotel) 1t 4483 Lindell Boulevard in the Central West End. Under city preservation law, a preliminary grant of demolition cannot be appealed until a demolition permit is issued. That stipulation makes appeals moot, at least beyond procedural review.

Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker, Jr. dismissed the Friends’ petition with prejudice. Dierker opined that preservation laws were an encumbrance on private property rights, and that only persons with direct financial interest — essentially, adjacent property owners — have standing under the city’s preservation ordinance. (Dierker’s forthcoming ruling in the Northside Regeneration suit should be interesting given that he must choose between the divergent interests of private property owners.) The ruling cut against city government’s own interpretation of the ordinance by granting only narrow right to redress.

Given Dierker’s conservative judicial activism, the Friends could have let the matter go. Yet we appealed to ensure that Dierker’s ruling does not stand as precedent in the future. Who knows when and why citizens will need rights to appeal the Preservation Board’s decisions? All we know is that the right to appeal should apply to any citizen of the city of St. Louis. After all, the ordinance states that “[t]he intent of this ordinance is to promote the prosperity and general welfare of the public, including particularly the educational and cultural welfare.”

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Central West End Events Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Lindell Mid-Century Modern Walking Tour, May 1

Lindell MCM Walking Tour

On Saturday, May 1, the City of St. Louis presents its first Open Streets 2010 event. From 8:00 a.m. through 1:00 p.m., a route through the city including most of Lindell Boulevard will be closed to vehicular traffic.

The St. Louis Building Arts Foundation is pleased to join the city’s effort by sponsoring an architectural walking tour showcasing the city’s modern architecture.

Lindell Mid-Century Modern Walking Tour

When: 10:00 a.m. (lasts approximately 90 minutes)

Where: Meet at the statue in front of Pius XII Memorial Library, 3650 Lindell Boulevard

What: A narrated tour of Lindell’s unusual array of modern architecture led by Michael Allen and Toby Weiss. From the somber International Style to New Brutalism to playful Googie, this tour has it all!

FREE

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Demolition Housing Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

Olivette Tear-Down

by Michael R. Allen

Last week I spotted this tear-down on Dielman Road at Engel Lane just south of Olive Boulevard. Another fine postwar ranch house, built sturdy of brick and concrete, will meet its death. Oh, recession, you were supposed to bring calm to the troubled waters of suburban real estate!

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Central West End Demolition Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

Doctors Building Site: Still Empty

by Michael R. Allen

In April 2008, Mills Group demolished the mid-century Doctors Building at Euclid and West Pine the Central West End. An under-appreciated modernist gem fell for a supposed “Citywalk” — a mixed-use building with residential condominiums and street-level retail. Although located in a preservation review district, the building’s demolition was approved by the Cultural Resources Office without a Preservation Board hearing. Fans of urban infill like the Park East Tower and Nine North Euclid down the street rejoiced.

Now, two years later, the site is a vacant lot with a pre-Softball Village condition. Crushed pieces of the Doctors Building are still strewn about the site. In September 2009, Mills announced that a part of Department of Housing and Urban Development financing had fallen into place, but there has been no news since then.

In some instances, the call for preservation may rightly be called an impediment to some developer’s ready-to-build plan. In the case of the Doctor’s Building, it was not so.

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Mid-Century Modern Neon Public Policy South St. Louis

That Donut Drive-In Sign

by Michael R. Allen

The animated neon sign at the Donut Drive-In, 6525 Chippewa Avenue in Lindenwood Park, returned to life on November 1, 2008. Donut Drive-In first opened in 1952 on what was then Route 66, the nation’s “Mother Road.” Many of the St. Louis stretch’s neon signs have disappeared, but not this one.

The owners of the donut shop could not afford to restore the Route 66 icon on their own, but were able to complete restoration using a matching grant from the the Route 66 Corridor Program administered by the National Park Service. The Missouri Route 66 Association was instrumental in assisting the owners with the grant process.

Since its creation by the National Park Service in 2001, the Route 66 Corridor Program has helped allow property owners to act in the public interest when otherwise unable. (Perhaps the National Park Service needs a name that tells people that its noble work is not limited to preserving open space.)

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Mid-Century Modern

Motels in the City of St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

The Winter 2009 issue of the Newsletter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Mississippi Valley Chapter contains my article “Motels in the City of St. Louis”, an overview of the 16 motels built in the city between 1958 and 1971.

By the way, the chapter now has all of its newsletters available in PDF format on its website. The quarterly newsletters, which date back to 1997 and are edited by Esley Hamilton, are a treasure trove of well-researched articles on the architectural history of St. Louis and Missouri. At $10, chapter membership is almost unreasonably affordable; the newsletter alone is worth many times that amount!

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Adaptive Reuse Mid-Century Modern South St. Louis

Bravo to SLU for Casa de Salud

by Michael R. Allen

Late last year, St. Louis University opened the Casa de Salud (House of Health, more or less), a clinic aimed at the city’s Latino population. The university made a smart move, choosing to house the clinic in a modest former auto parts building at the southwest corner of Compton and Chouteau. The building dates to the 1950s and is quintessentially modern. SLU’s renovation was basic, and left all of the mid-century features intact. The new sign is stylistically appropriate and provides some night time interest to a fairly dormant intersection. The old aluminum storefront system’s ample windows open the building up to the sidewalk, and at night provide a bright, colorful view. SLU took an existing building, retained and enhanced its architectural features and converted it to a new use. Bravo!

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Downtown Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

"Up in the Air": A Shining Moment for St. Louis’ Modern Architecture

by Michael R. Allen

Finally seeing Up in the Air this week, I was able to relish a great moment for St. Louis modern architecture. Readers know that much of the film was shot in St. Louis, and the film rolls out familiar scenes: a street in Lafayette Square, Flora Place, the Cheshire Inn, the Gateway One building downtown, Mansion House and the interior of the General American Life Insurance Building are all spotted. Fans of local postmodern design no doubt took comfort in the fact that our downtown landmarks of the 1980s are so generic that they can double for Omaha’s. That placelessness is a triumph for the style, at least by Fredric Jameson’s measure.

However, the actual shining moment for St. Louis was the prominent feature of the main terminal at Lambert International Airport (shown above unsullied in 1970). Lots of the film takes place inside of the airport — again, the triumph of place-erasing architecture — but there is a splendid moment in front. George Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham has to get a snapshot of a cut-out of his sister and her fiancee in St. Louis for a display board of such photos at their rehearsal dinner. Bingham selects Lambert Airport, a choice questioned by his colleague Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick).

The doubt pulls from Bingham a soliloquy about the role of the Lambert terminal in the development of modern airport architecture. Of course the soon-to-be newlyweds would want their cut-out photographed in front of the Lambert terminal. After all, this is the first modern terminal that set the standard before JFK or DeGaulle were designed. Despite the clutter we have tacked onto Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber’s 1956 terminal, it looks great in this scene. The terminal’s modernity shines through, and provokes one of several moment in which Bingham seems to break from his detachment to show love.

Bingham basically reiterates the words of critic Robert W. Duffy, who wrote a few years back that the Lambert terminal was “the first airport building to make a formal statement about aviation and aerodynamics.” The thin-cast concrete shell demonstrated that architecture could respond to the curves and contours of industrial design in an original expression.

Coincidentally, St. Louis’ other great modernist temple of travel also had a moment of film fame. Schwarz and Van Hoefen’s Greyhound Terminal (1964) on Broadway (interior seen here), demolished for the domed stadium we seem posed to soon demolish, was used in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. John Hughes chose to shoot the interior scene elsewhere, but the exterior was projected onto thousands of screens around the nation.

To some, the idea that St. Louis and modern jet-set travel — of which I make no claim that Greyhound is a part — are intertwined would seem foolish. Yet how did a supposedly complacent region embrace and build one of the landmarks of postwar international travel, and a bus station finer than almost any other ever built? We had great designers whose wellspring of innovation was too great to be harnessed by innate local conservatism. That conservatism was as strong in 1956 as it is in 2009, too, so we don’t get to cop out and rest on our cynicism. If a place-loathing cynic like Ryan Bingham can show some love for St. Louis’ modern architecture, why can’t we?

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Belleville, Illinois Mid-Century Modern Neon Signs

Harter’s Hobby House Sign Removed

by Michael R. Allen

For decades, Harter’s Hobby House at 1001 West Main in Belleville beckoned hobbyists with its colorful sign, which resembled a blue pin-striped stick of dynamite with a starlight mint-like pinwheel fuse. The sign is no more, having been replaced recently with a simple new sign.

The old sign was a complex metal sign with three plastic back-lit name boards, an enameled body and neon tubing on the pinwheel. The letters in the possessive “Harter’s” were proper cursive fit for business, while the words “Hobby House” had a carefree lettering somewhere between kindergarten script and a typesetter’s mistake.

Where did the sign go? Anyone with information is welcome to post in the comments section or email the editor, who missed the changeover.

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Central West End Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern National Register

Momentary Reprieve for Two of Lindell’s Modern Buildings

by Michael R. Allen

The view here might exist for awhile longer. Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that CVS’ plan to demolish the three buildings at the southwest corner of Sarah and Lindell avenues is off. CVS no longer plans to pursue purchase of the buildings. Observers had seen a conspicuous for-sale sign go up in front of one of the buildings a few weeks ago.

Sometimes the market is the strongest preservation force. Of course, the market will be up again, and financing for new construction on the sites of these buildings could be easy to obtain. Thus what happens next is important. These three buildings are attractive, usable urban buildings.

On the corner, at 4100 Lindell, we have Hellmuth Obata Kassebaum’s Sperry-Rand Building (1956), most recently the home of the St. Louis Housing Authority. The minimalist modernism has a lot of potential for commercial or retail space.

The small building next door at 4108 Lindell, originally home of the St. Louis Society for Crippled Children, dates to 1960. This is a supporting player in the cast of local modern architecture, but handsome in its own right. The St. Louis Housing Authority also owns this building.

The final building, located at 4120 Lindell Boulevard, is a two-story Colonial Revival office building from 1937 much larger than its front elevation suggests. The setback may not meet the urbanist formula, but the density of site use is pretty solid. However elegant, the Colonial Revival buildings on Lindell are admittedly not as architecturally significant as their modern brethren.

The modern buildings form an architectural context recently demonstrated in the successful listing in the National Register of Historic Places nomination of the at 4630 Lindell. Not all of the modern buildings on Lindell can be listed individually. Clearly, however, the modern buildings on Lindell as a group have sufficient significance to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places under a multiple-property cover. That action would make it easier for interested owners to list their buildings and be eligible for historic rehabilitation tax credits. Then, the market might be more than a momentary ally in preservation efforts.