Category: Midtown

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Central West End Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Lindell Boulevard: St. Louis’ Modernism Corridor

by Michael R. Allen

Lindell's show-stopper: The Chancery of the Archdiocese of St. Louis at 4445 Lindell, designed by W.A. Sarmiento and completed in 1962.

For years Toby Weiss and I have been giving tours of and writing about the unique concentration of mid-century modernism on Lindell Boulevard between Grand and Kingshighway. This significant concentration of modernism has sustained some losses and currently is enduring threats to both the IBM Building (1959, Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum) and the AAA Building (1976, W.A. Sarmiento). However it remains the city’s strongest collection of non-residential mid-century modern design.

Modern STL, on whose board both Toby and I serve, has now published a beautiful two-page self guided tour of Lindell Boulevard that includes information about each of the street’s mid-century modern buildings as well as a brief essay that I wrote providing an overview of modernism on Lindell. Modern STL board member Neil Chace generously donated his talent to design the guide. Download it here and then go for a lovely walk down Lindell!

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Mid-Century Modern Midtown

SLU Picks Apart HOK

by Michael R. Allen

Every time I give a tour of the concentration of mid-century modern buildings along Lindell Boulevard between Grand and Kingshighway, I always stop at the former IBM Building at 3800 Lindell Boulevard. Built in 1959, the three-story building may have been a rather boring business box, but the designers at Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum liberated the form.

What makes this building architecturally interesting as well as very practical is the cantilevered concrete block screens over the upper floors.  The sectional screen reveals in each gap that the windows are nearly continuous behind — thus what seems like a very heavy building actually is light and airy inside, and screened from the sun out!

The screen is another demonstration that architects understood basic ideas about deflecting harsh sunlight and increasing energy efficiency long before they could win LEED points. The IBM Building isn’t “green” in today’s sense, of course, but it sure makes a smart move with the screens.  This feature is sensitive rather than forceful, too: the screen’s overhang neatly matches the perimeter line of the battered, stone-faced pedestal on the Lindell Boulevard side.  The rubble stone contrasts smartly with the modern, regulated masonry and concrete above.

Alas, today St. Louis University started removing the screen from the building. Now called Adorjan Hall, the building houses various humanities departments. Most of the upper floors is office space, occupied by professors and support staff who will now work against huge, unshielded clear glass windows. An energy-efficiency feature from 1959 is being removed in 2011, when we supposedly know better how to “green” our buildings.

If I could explain this one away, I would.

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Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Del Taco and Aldermanic Courtesy

by Michael R. Allen

This morning, in an unusual step, the Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen held a spirited and divided discussion on a seemingly-routine redevelopment ordinance: Board Bills 118 and 199, pertaining to the ongoing redevelopment of Council Plaza by developers Rick Yackey and Bill Bruce. Board Bill 118 enabled a redevelopment plan approved by the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority that would entail demolition of the mid-century awesome former Phillips 66 gas station now used as a Del Taco restaurant. Board Bill 119 makes changes to the Council Plaza tax increment financing (TIF) that would allow TIF funds to cover demolition costs. Both passed, but Board Bill 118 made it out with only on a 5-2 vote.

Photograph by Rob Powers, builtstlouis.net.

I write that it was “only” a 5-2 vote because the split truly is unusual for the committee. Bigger fish have been fried by consensus or with minimal dissent. The CORTEX redevelopment ordinance that is responsible for the current demolition (without preservation review) of the bakery complex at Vandeventer and Forest Park? Passed by a unanimous vote in 2006. The enormous and contested Northside Regeneration project’s ordinance, now invalidated by a circuit court ruling? Passed with only one “nay” — Alderman Terry Kennedy — in 2009.

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Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Redevelopment Bill for Flying Saucer Flying Through Board of Aldermen

Photograph by Rob Powers, builtstlouis.net.

Readers are no doubt aware of the demolition threat to the former Phillips 66 station, now Del Taco, at Council Plaza. On Wednesday morning, the Housing, Urban Design and Zoning Committee of the Board of Aldermen will consider Board Bill 118, a redevelopment plan sponsored by Alderwoman Marlene Davis (D-19th) that would make the demolition plan into city law. The committee has the power to change the bill or vote against its release to the full Board of Aldermen.

Once passed out of committee, Board Bill 118 will have to have at least two more readings at the regular Friday sessions of the Board of Aldermen. Its defeat or amendment on the floor is only possible if a majority of the 28 aldermen — that would be 15 — stand up for the beloved Googie building. One possible amendment would be clarifying whether preservation review will still apply under the legislation. The current version contains language that seems to bind the city’s Cultural Resources Office to approve any demolition permit for the midtown spaceship.

Should a majority endorse Board Bill 118, the bill heads to Mayor Francis Slay for signature — or veto.

Modern STL has the action steps for this week here.

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Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Council Plaza: Exceptionally Significant

Council Plaza is located at 212-300 S. Grand Boulevard and consists of two residential towers, a two-story commercial building over covered parking and the space-age Phillips 66 service station that is now a Del Taco restaurant. These buildings were built between 1964 and 1968. In 2007, the National Park Service placed Council Plaza on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district despite their relatively young age. The listing affirmed that Council Plaza had “exceptional significance” under National Register guidelines and could be listed ahead of its 50th birthday.

Read more history in the National Register of Historic Places nomination prepared by Melinda Winchester of Lafser & Associates.

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Central West End Downtown Mid-Century Modern Midtown Motels North St. Louis South St. Louis

Motels in the City of St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

A version of this article first appeared in the Winter 2009 NewsLetter of the St. Louis Chapter of the Society Architectural Historians.

There is ample recognition of the significance of mid-century motels along roadsides across America, where motels used colorful signage and design to beckon to weary Americans enjoying their automotive freedom. Perhaps because of nostalgic idealization of the motor court and the “open road” and perhaps because of the stigma that postwar urban renewal efforts have attained, local history overlooks the significant wave of urban motel construction that took place in St. Louis between 1958 and 1970.

Advertisement for the Bel Air Motel. Note that the front wing does not yet have the third story addition.

The 1958 opening of the Bel Air Motel on Lindell Boulevard renewed the building of lodging in the City of St. Louis while introducing a hotel form new to the city, the motel. St. Louis’ last new hotel before that was the nearby Park Plaza Hotel (1930), a soaring, elegant Art Deco tower built on the cusp of the Great Depression. However, another hotel built before the Depression was more indicative of future trends than the Park Plaza. In 1928, Texas developer and automobile travel enthusiast Percy Tyrell opened the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 205 N. 18th Street in downtown St. Louis (listed in the National Register on February 7, 2007), designed by Kansas City architect Alonzo Gentry. While the 14-story Renaissance Revival hotel was stylistically similar to contemporary hotels, it introduced the chain economy hotel to St. Louis.

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Abandonment LRA Midtown Theaters

Bright Days Ahead for the Sun Theater?

by Michael R. Allen

The front elevation of the Sun Theater. Photograph by Michaela Burwell-Taylor.

There seems to be some confusion as to the fate of the elegant, vacant Sun Theater at 3627 Grandel Square in midtown. The sumptuously-ornamented theater has been owned by the Land Reutilization Authority since 2009, when long-time owner Grand Center, Inc. conveyed the theater to the city. Before and after that transaction, news about the theater has ranged from an absurd plan to dismantle the front elevation and rebuild it on Grand Avenue adjacent to Powell Hall to a promising but unsuccessful effort by KDHX to convert the building to its studios. The Sun was on Landmarks Association’s 2007 Most Endangered Places list.

The western wall. Photograph by Michaela Burwell-Taylor.

Currently, according to Grand Center, Inc., the nearly-completed rehab of the Pythian Building to the east for the Grand Center Arts Academy will be followed by rehabilitation of the Sun Theater into the school’s auditorium and performance space. Yet after a storm in late February caused masonry damage to the western wall of the Sun, the LRA issued a request for proposals (RFP) to demolition contractors for demolishing the venerable theater. One demolition contractor reports that LRA would not allow interior access to prospective bidders.

Continue reading “Bright Days Ahead for the Sun Theater?”
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Housing Midtown National Register

The William Cuthbert Jones House, A Midtown Gem

by Michael R. Allen

The William Cuthbert Jones House.

The William Cuthbert Jones House, located at 3724 Olive Street, is a rare example of a 19th century town house that not only survived the decline of Midtown but has also retained substantially its historic character with few alterations. The limestone-faced two-story brick house in the Italianate style was designed by architect Jerome Bibb Legg in 1886 for William Cuthbert Jones, a prominent attorney and criminal court judge.

The house is a good representative example of both Legg’s many client-driven house designs and of the sort of residences that were built on Olive Street in the 1880s. Compared to larger houses on more prominent streets in the Midtown neighborhood, houses on Olive were relatively smaller and less ornate. The house is also noteworthy as one of a handful of extant local works by Legg, who took on much work elsewhere.

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Demolition Midtown

SLU Removes Another Locust Street Building

by Michael R. Allen

Perhaps it comes as little surprise that St. Louis University has now demolished the vacant building at 3227 Locust Street that it owned at the northeast corner of Locust and Leonard streets on Automobile Row in Midtown. After all, the hole in the roof of the one-story corner building had grown so large that Google’s satellite images made the damage clear. Residents of the loft units across the street had an ever closer, and more graphic, view.

Looking inside of 3227 Locust Street through the front door's window, July 2010.

The hole in the roof is now a hole in the street wall at a corner intersection. Contrast the appearance of the corner in July 2010 with the appearance today:

While undistinguished architecturally, the building defined a cross-street intersection and provided continuity between the more developed blocks of Locust east of Compton and the emerging development around the Moto Museum to the west. The visual gap between these two areas has grown, at a time when even the university had embraced rehabilitation of other buildings it owns on the block to the west. This lost building had a solid masonry body and needed only a new roof. It was a sturdy shell that could have been a turnkey retail or restaurant project. Now the corner development entails new construction, ratcheting the cost of making something happen there higher than the reach of post-bubble developers.


View Larger Map

A look at the map makes the impact of what otherwise might seem to be an insignificant building clear.

To the west, a parking lot and another corner building.

To the west of the building already was a parking lot, which could have provided interim parking for any user of the corner building. How likely is infill of this block within the next five years? How much more likely was reuse of the building at 3227 Locust Street?

Across the street at 3224 Locust Street is the recently-rehabilitated Cadillac Building (1919; William A. Balch, architect)

    Amid the ebbs and flows of Locust Street’s emerging new life, there have been some amazing successes — the Automobile Row historic district designation, the new SLU-backed hotel project — as well as avoidable mistakes — the livery stable fiasco, the closure of Josephine Baker Avenue. This small demolition suggests that the area would benefit from demolition review, which it currently lacks. Most of the Locust Street business district is in the 19th ward, which is one of a handful of city wards whose aldermen opted not to have demolition review when the city passed its latest preservation ordinance in 1999. With so much vacant land whose fate is key to maintaining the urban character, a zoning overlay and local historic district ordinances could also be appropriate.

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Midtown Streets

Vandeventer, Your Granite is Showing

by Michael R. Allen

While heading north on Vandeventer Avenue today we spotted an open cut just south of Lindell Boulevard, in which workers were repairing pipes. The cross-section of street looked like this:

One can easily see a layer of red Missouri granite paving blocks under the asphalt. Granite paving like this came into use in St. Louis during the early 1880s.  Peter Vandeventer opened the Vandeventer Place addition in 1870, and the street was laid out then from Cass Avenue on the north to Lindell Boulevard on the south.  The southern extension between Lindell Boulevard and Old Manchester Road (now also called Vandeventer) is shown on Pitzman’s 1878 atlas of St. Louis County and City.

Vandeventer likely was unpaved at the start, so the granite blocks may be the street’s original paving.  Judging from what is evident today, they are likely intact and buried directly under the asphalt.  We are never very far from our roots, are we?