Category: North St. Louis

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National Register North St. Louis Old North Wells-Goodfellow

Year Ends for the Better in Two North St. Louis Commercial Districts

by Michael R. Allen

St. Louis Public Radio aired my latest commentary this morning. Listen to it here. The extended script follows.

This year ends with positive changes for two of north St. Louis’ most distressed neighborhood commercial districts – the 14th Street district in Old North St. Louis and a section of Martin Luther King Drive in the Wellston Loop area.

In Old North, the $35 million Crown Square redevelopment project has transformed two blocks that once were the commercial center of the neighborhood. In 1977, using federal funds, the city of St. Louis closed the street to create a pedestrian mall. Eventually that mall killed the foot and vehicle traffic necessary to sustain the businesses.

Thankfully and improbably, most of the buildings fronting 14th Street on the two blocks between St. Louis and Warren streets survived abandonment. Now, these buildings have been beautifully rehabilitated into residential and commercial spaces. 14th Street is set to reopen to traffic early next year. Old North will regain a vital center.

The good news in the Martin Luther King Drive in the Wellston Loop area comes from an earlier chapter in the renewal story than the news from Old North. In November, a state review council approved a National Register of Historic Places nomination for 65 buildings on or around the north side thoroughfare from Clara Avenue west to the city limits.

The designation honors the cultural and architectural significance of what was in the late 1940s the city’s busiest shopping district. However, the designation also makes available rehabilitation tax credits long sought by building owners in the area. Such credits were crucial in rebuilding Crown Square.

Commercial districts are barometers of neighborhood health. Once they die, a neighborhood may be gone forever. By all indications, Old North and the Wellston Loop have a lot of life left in them.

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North St. Louis Schools SLPS The Ville

Marshall School Awaits New Use

by Michael R. Allen

This week’s news of a reprieve for Sumner High School brought relief to the Ville neighborhood, where another public school remains vacant after closing this summer. Stately John Marshall School stands at 4342 Aldine Avenue between Newstead and Pendleton avenues. The three-story building in the Classical Revival style dates to 1900 and is one of architect William B. Ittner’s first uses of the E-Plan layout.

The entrance is imposing and formed by brick piers supporting a massing terra cotta entablature. Brown terra cotta is used there and surrounding the doorway, over which a bust of John Marshall watches.

Like Sumner, Marshall School is a crucial part of the cultural legacy of the Ville. During segregation, the school became an African-American intermediate school in 1918 and an elementary school in 1927. Many students who would pass through the doors of mighty Sumner High School, also designed by Ittner, would first pass through Marshall School.

What future may be in store for the shuttered Marshall School is uncertain. With deed restrictions against charter school purchase lifted by the St. Louis Public Schools, educational use is possible. For now, however, all that is certain is that the Ville does not need another vacant school building.

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Historic Preservation Housing North St. Louis Visitation Park

Winston Churchill Apartments

by Michael R. Allen

One of the best preservation stories to come out of north St. Louis this year was the rehabilitation of the Winston Churchill Apartments at 5435-75 Cabanne Avenue in Visitation Park. The apartment building had long been the scourge of a changing neighborhood — and not because it was a vacant eyesore. The Winston Churchill was fully occupied and generating as many as 300 calls to the police from neighbors before the apartments closed in 2005. In some cases, shutting down a nuisance property is only a trade between an occupied nuisance and a vacant one.

Because of the Friedman Group, Ltd. and Dublin Capital, the Winston Churchill instead was rejuvenated through a $12 million rehabilitation designed by Klitzing Welsh Architects and built out by E.M. Harris Construction Company. The building reopened with 101 affordable housing units. Many new houses have been built to the west of the Winston Churchill on Cabanne Avenue. Reopening the apartments ensures that the neighborhood offers housing to residents who are not in the market for owning a brand-new house or a large old home.

Built in 1927, the eight-story, concrete-framed Winston Churchill is an imposing, somewhat austere building. The brick architrave at the top is often mistaken for patchwork that replaced the original cornice, but the building never had any such cornice. The stark termination of the building is original (see two historic photographs here. The first two floors provide a softer neoclassical base clad in native Missouri limestone. The firm Avis, Hall and Proetz designed the apartment building, which is named for the once-renowned St. Louis novelist whose fame preceded that of the British statesman.

At the time of construction, the Winston Churchill stood in the shadow of a more imposing building, the Visitation Academy by Barnett, Haynes and Barnett (1891) across the street. The eclectic French Renaissance Revival academy was the second St. Louis home of the school and convent of the Sisters of the Visitation, who had migrated to the city in 1844 following a devastating flood that destroyed their building in Kaskaskia, Illinois. The Sisters’ tenure at Cabanne and Belt would last through 1962, when the order opened a new school and convent on Ballas Road in St. Louis County.

The building on Cabanne was demolished one year later, and the site donated to the City of St. Louis. The park is now known as Ivory Perry Park, well-known for its summer concert series. The Winston Churchill Apartments is now the architectural anchor of the corner of Cabanne and Belt avenues, providing necessary housing as well as visual interest.

Categories
Academy Neighborhood Demolition North St. Louis Preservation Board Schools SLPS

Good News and Bad News on Page Boulevard

by Michael R. Allen

Preservationists should send their thanks to Better Family Life, a cultural and educational organization that is uplifting African-American St. Louis while rehabilitating one of our city’s irreplaceable historic schools. In 2005, Better Family Life purchased the shuttered Ralph Waldo Emerson School at 5415 Page Boulevard. This year, the organization began a $4.5 million rehabilitation that will convert the school into an educational and cultural center.

Currently, a construction fence surrounds the school. Workers are on site most days, and a lift was in front today. The daily activity at Emerson School has not been this high since the school’s last day of classes in June 2003. When the school closed, few predicted that any serious buyer would step forward so soon. The landmark could have become an abandoned wreck.

Designed by William B. Ittner and completed in 1901, the brick school is one of the earliest of Ittner’s schools in the hybrid “Jacobethan” style that he helped popularize. Ittner began working for the St. Louis Board of Education in 1898, and did not turn to the Renaissance styles until a few years into his tenure. Emerson School is a handsome early work utilizing the architect’s open floor plan. The grace of the landmark shall be with us for generations, thanks to Better Family Life.

If only all good news from St. Louis’ built environment did not have to be counterbalanced by bad news. Just two blocks east of Emerson on the south side of mighty Page Boulevard at Union Boulevards, another north side landmark is meeting a sad end. The corner commercial block at 5986-98 Page Boulevard, written about on this blog several times before, is finally falling to the wreckers. I offer here an image of the building in better days, and will spare readers yet another demolition photograph.

The corner building is a younger building than Emerson School, with a completion date at 1905. The two-story building is part of the Mount Cabanne-Raymond Place Historic District and could have been reused utilizing historic tax credit programs. Surely, commercial storefronts and apartments enjoy far more demand in the city than cultural centers. However, the building had the wrong owner, the Berean Seventh Day Adventist Church, which will be building a parking lot on the site.

In February 2008, the city’s Preservation Board voted 5-2 to deny a demolition permit for this building. Then, in June 2009, the city’s Planning Commission arbitrarily overturned the Preservation Board decision.

The story got stranger after that when the church failed to meet the requirements of the Planning Commission decision but began demolition this summer without a permit. City officials called a halt to the wrecking, but the wreckers had already delivered fatal damage by removing most of the roof. Now the rest of the building will be removed legally. Page Boulevard will have a completely disjointed, unhinged intersection with Union Boulevard. Two prominent thoroughfares shall meet at an intersection as full of character as any generic suburban intersection anywhere in the United States. This city, it should be stated, deserves better. It deserves what it had before.

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Fountain Park North St. Louis Urban Assets LLC

Board Up Award

by Michael R. Allen

And the award for boarding up almost every window on a front elevation of an abandoned north St. Louis house surrounded by occupied houses goes to: Urban Assets LLC, for 1414 N. Euclid Avenue in Fountain Park!

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis Rehabbing West End

West Cabanne Place Living

by Michael R. Allen

Photograph courtesy of Landmarks Association of St. Louis.

The city’s West Cabanne Place opened in 1888 as a semi-rural private street, located away from the urban core of St. Louis. Many prominent businessmen and a few architects — including Charles Ramsey and Theodore Link — purchased lots and built large homes on West Cabanne. Built in 1889 for E.O. Pope of the Jones-Pope Produce Company, the house at 5927 West Cabanne was one of the earliest residences on the street. The designer of the eclectic home remains unknown. Jane Porter, author of the National Register of Historic Places nomination for West Cabanne Place, suggests that a contractor rather than an architect designed the Italianate-influenced house, which mixes elements rather freely.

In the 1990s, 5927 West Cabanne Place appeared to be at risk of being lost. Landmarks Association of St. Louis included in the house in its annual Eleven Most Endangered Places list for several years. Eventually, however, the home fell into the hands of an owner who gave the house needed rehabilitation work. The exterior was restored by removing asphalt siding and repairing and replacing wooden elements. Now the spacious residence is for sale for the unbelievable price of $119,000. This truly must be a buyer’s market, for a rehabilitated home on West Cabanne Place to be offered at that price!

Categories
Events Historic Preservation North St. Louis Old North

Second Anti-Wrecking Ball: Success

by Michael R. Allen

Toby Weiss has already posted an excellent recap of last night’s Anti-Wrecking Ball, but here’s another. In short, we raised more money than we thought that we could, had more people attend than we expected and had a lot more dancing than usually seen at preservation fundraisers!



Video by Toby Weiss.

Dozens of people came to Old North St. Louis to support the cause of citizen preservation action and to enjoy a party inside of the spacious, lovely new Old North St. Louis Community Gallery. The venue was perfect, and not simply spatially. While the event’s focus was raising money for the Friends of the San Luis‘ appeal of a circuit court ruling against citizen standing in preservation battles, it was also a celebration of all that we can do together. The gallery is smack dab in the middle of the revitalized 14th Street commercial district, until recently a horrid pedestrian mall. The rebirth of the mall and Old North have come through the dedication of scores of people working against tough odds. Citizens, acting on the belief that we can make our neighborhoods better places and save our irreplaceable landmarks.

The attendance was a great example of the wide support for preservation. There were north side residents, young urbanists, veteran preservationists, architects, artists, anti-eminent domain activists, and even a Preservation Board member. Up the street at the Urban Studio Cafe there was an art opening, and crowds migrated back and forth throughout the evening.

DJ Darren Snow kept a wonderful flow of music going. Emily Beck created a powerful slide show that weaved together the past year of Friends of the San Luis events, architectural images and photographs of people across the city celebrating the historic architecture of our neighborhoods. The Chase Park Plaza Cinemas, STL Style and Toby and I provided raffle items. Volunteers too numerous to mention pitched in, and the party went well past the advertised midnight close. Bravo!

Categories
Brick Theft North St. Louis Vandeventer

Depletion, West Evans Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

This summer and fall, brick thieves have destroyed four houses on the 4200 block of West Evans Avenue in the Vandeventer neighborhood. Shown above are three of the houses, the privately-owned 4219 W. Evans (left) and the Land Reutilization Authority-owned 4207 (center) and 4203 (right) W. Evans Avenue. Across the street are the remains of the privately-owned house at 4202 W. Evans Avenue.


This block is located in the city’s Fourth Ward, which is represented by Alderman Sam Moore (Democrat). Moore has been vigilant in trying to keep brick thieves out of his ward, as he explains in a 2007 video produced for Pub Def by Antonio French.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

A City Guarantee for Northside Regeneration

by Michael R. Allen

At the November 13 ceremonial signing of the first ordinances related to the Northside Regeneration redevelopment concept, Mayor Francis Slay made statements to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Tim Logan that indicated his former hard line against a public guarantee of any of the $390 million in tax increment financing bonds authorized by one of the ordinances. Northside Regeneration’s developer, Paul J. McKee, Jr., has told the press on numerous occasions that the project won’t work without a public guarantee of some kind. Slay and Deputy Mayor Barbara Geisman have assured the public that City Hall was not eager to support such a guarantee.

Yet on November 13, Slay told Logan that there “may be some limited participation” from city government. He followed that statement up with an ambiguous one: “To what extent, if any, the city is going to do that hasn’t been determined.”

It should be determined in one word: No.

At least, the City of St. Louis should not pledge its full faith and credit to cover any of the bonds for the Northside Regeneration TIF. For one thing, the city simply cannot afford the liability. In the last two weeks, the press has reported several stories about a $20 million city budget shortfall and mandatory city employee furloughs. It’s not fair to ask city employees to take a hit and then be open to handing a private developer the right to bankrupt the city. Even a $1 million guarantee is too much risk for a city government trying to avoid a giant deficit.

Precedent for city guarantee shows high risk and poor development outcomes. Our first foray was backing the bonds for Midland Group’s $53 million St. Louis Marketplace on Manchester Road, completed in 1991. The developers sold the city on the promise that reclaiming the old Scullin Steel site — a true brownfield — for the sort of retail center found all over St. Louis County would lead to a sales tax boon. That promise rang hollow, and revenue fell short of the projection used to sell the TIF. The city has paid $3 million toward the TIF for the Marketplace, and will pay another $1,3 million before the TIF expires in 2011. The St. Louis Marketplace has high vacancy and low demand for its spaces.

Next, in 2003 the city backed bonds issued for the Renaissance Grand Hotel & Suites on Washington Avenue downtown. This time, developers Historic Restoration, Inc. and a subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark Corporation didn’t sell the vision to the city, but capitalized on the mythic promise that St. Louis desperately needed a giant convention hotel to compete for major conventions. The hotel has never met revenue and occupancy projections, and $13.6 million from federal block grants to St. Louis have been used to cover shortfalls.

Most recent and most irresponsible was the city’s decision to guarantee bonds for Pyramid’s $26 million purchase of One City Centre in 2006. Time will tell how bad the damage to city coffers will be. Currently, the city is trying to work out a plan to keep the office tower profitable by converting the surrounding St. Louis Centre mall into parking to serve tenants. With the prospect of being on the hook for the bonds, the city has no time to wait to consider more creative ideas for reusing the old mall.

Some might argue that Northside Regeneration is too different from past city-guaranteed projects to be compared. However, fundamentally, the project shares a lot in common with the three other projects: the “last great hope” myth surrounding the project, the unrealistic revenue projections and the developer using public process to lure private capital to the project. The truth is that the Northside Regeneration project is so malleable and undefined that any revenue projections created right now are just fancy guesstimates. I write this with some hope, because the malleability of the project makes it more possible to reconcile McKee’s vision with community needs.

The reconciliation of McKee’s private aims and the civic life of north St. Louis is exactly where some help from city government would come in handy. If City Hall and the Board of Aldermen want to commit resources to speed along redevelopment, there are appropriate ways of doing so that are fairly noncontroversial: roads, streets, sidewalks and parks. There are service needs in the footprint of McKee’s Northside project that should be addressed now — especially in those parts of the project McKee has phased as the last areas to get development.

One project that the city could try to fund early on are stabilization and marketing of Land Reutilization Authority buildings in the project area, so that historic buildings are preserved and ready-to-rehab buildings are available for microdevelopers and rehabbers. Another project that would be of great benefit to all citizens is restoration and enhancement of St. Louis Place Park. DeSoto Park and others need improvements as well. And the area’s sidewalk network is badly damaged. These are all improvements that have been needed for a long time, and are promised in the Northside Regeneration presentation. Why not start them now?

Public sector expenditure can be used to make the near north side a better place for current residents. McKee will realize benefits too, of course, but not at the expense of the people his plan is supposed to help. The city guarantee that needs to be on the table is a guarantee that residents of the near north side will benefit from the redevelopment project, enjoy an improved quality of life and have their tax dollars used for true public benefit.

Categories
Adaptive Reuse Demolition Forest Park Southeast North St. Louis St. Louis County

Some Thoughts on Our Gasometer(s)

by Michael R. Allen

The impending demolition of the two gasometers in Shrewsbury draws me back to the demolition of the gasometer in Forest Park Southeast. Once one of two gasometers at Laclede Gas Company’s Pumping Station G and built in 1901 (rebuilt in 1942), the Forest Park Southeast gasometer was a landmark for over a century. When Highway 40 was first built, the gasometer’s prominence greatly increased, and it was one of several iconic structures — the St. Louis Science Center’s McDonnell Planetarium, the grain elevator at Sarah and Duncan, Barnes Hospital — that gave a magically urban character to an otherwise dull trip down the highway. Within Forest Park Southeast, the gasometer’s web of steel served as a backdrop to views from backyards, bedrooms and sidewalks. The gasometer was a strange remnant that had outlived its purpose — regulating the supply of the city’s gas system — but not its industrial charm and connection to the past.

In 2006, developers successfully listed Pumping Station G in the National Register of Historic Places (read the nomination by Susan Sheppard and Doug Johnson here). The State Historic Preservation Office insisted that the gasometer be included, and the gasometer was listed as a contributing structure. However, the official landmark status provided no protection. The developers had never intended to try to save the structure.

An eloquent plea for preservation from historian and then-St. Louis University professor Joseph Heathcott, “Getting creative with the region’s exceptional industrial heritage”, appeared in the February 8, 2007 issue of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, but there was no strong effort to preserve the gasometer. There was plenty of discussion, however, among architects, Forest Park Southeast residents and preservationists. The alternative ends for the gasometer were obvious. Several European cities, including London and Vienna, have converted iconic gasometers into equally iconic apartment and office buildings. Others have maintained the structures as urban artifacts. Heathcott’s article alluded to the imaginative possibilities.

Photograph of Viennese gasometer reuse project from Wikipedia.

Alas, imagination did not win out. Neither did National Register protection; the city’s Cultural Resources Office approved demolition of the gasometer without bringing the matter to a public hearing at the Preservation Board. Demolition of the gasometer was completed in the middle of 2007.


Today, the Pumping Station G site is largely vacant. The pumping house (1911) still stands, vacant but slated for rehabilitation. The developers who wrecked the gasometer sold the site to different developers, who have yet to devise plans for the site. In the end, the gasometer could have remained standing as a resource for its neighborhood and a icon for the city. Perhaps a new owner would have been interested in the challenge of finding a new use for the structure. Now, the gasometer is gone, and two of its three sisters soon also will be gone.

That leaves St. Louis only one chance to reclaim a gasometer: the gasometer at the vacant Pumping Station N, located just south of Natural Bridge Road on Chevrolet Avenue in north St. Louis. Can we rise to the challenge of retaining an endangered structural type, or will we let it fall too?