Photograph from Geo St. Louis showing the corner building at 4401 Evans Avenue (right).
“Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe should yawn at alteration.”
– Othello, Act 5, Scene 2
Yesterday, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival ended this year’s run of Othello, and the quote included here reminded me of where I had been on Saturday. On Saturday, I spent some time with a journalist examining the sites of north city buildings that were sound and saveable but whose ends were near or already passed. While the ongoing depletion of north city’s neighborhoods is not the sudden and intense calamity that fell upon Cyprus in the play, it certainly represents a tragic eclipse occurring slowly and deliberately.
The globe of the city seems to yawn in response indeed, even though the results of building loss render some corners more rural than the Bootheel. At the northwest corner of Evans and Newstead avenues, we came upon the unearthed foundation of a corner storefront freshly demolished. Seven years ago, I walked this block of Evans to be greeted by a medley of brick buildings richly detailed with abundant ornamental brick, terra cotta, stamped metal and carved wood.
The site of 4401 Evans Avenue as it appeared over the weekend.
Now, the view from the corner makes the eye aim a half-block to hit a building wall. What the eye catches there is a vacant building, whose own life seems at a close. To the north, there is meadow and tree line for two blocks. Upon the soil no longer is rendered city, but some decomposed self. Like Othello, we have been blinded to the truth of our condition. Yet no schemer’s machinations lead us astray — just the neglect of inadequate policy.
This blog continues to chronicle the loss of north St. Louis building stock. Our goal is to illuminate the repetitive impact of careless demolition policy, and the social impact of individual demolitions. There is a special problem posed by demolitions in neighborhoods that are proximate to parts of the north side that have retained architectural integrity and are already listed or eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
Aerial photograph of the area around the intersection of Warne and West Florissant avenues. The location of the demolition at 4347-49 College Avenue is marked by the asterisk. O'Fallon's dense blocks are at right, Fairground's depleting density is at bottom right and College Hill's depleted blocks are at top right.
Demolitions across the north side don’t just remove problem properties. They remove housing stock and reduce the voter rolls. Demolitions destabilize neighborhoods. They erode sense of place, which turns owner-occupants away from neighborhoods, or north St. Louis entirely. Demolitions and persistent vacant lots lower land values. Expedient, perhaps. Damaging, for sure. The long-term impact of demolishing vacant buildings is the fulfillment of the “Team Four Plan” mythology: a depleted half-city easy to dismiss and lacking in density needed for truly flourishing urban life.
In August of 2011, I started a personal project of photographing Hyde Park. What I did not expect to get out of this project was a connection between place and one person in particular. The buildings were my initial start, but something was going on in Hyde Park at the time that excluded the buildings. I began to notice multiple demolition sites, piles of ruble and vacant lots. Sure, you see this all over the city — but who has to look out the window everyday at it is the real question.
On this particular day I had the 4×5 camera out. This camera is always a catalyst for conversation and it sparked one of the most touching stories I ever heard. While photographing this hay covered corner lot, I met this woman. She proceeded to tell me that she was the one who put out the hay.
The building at the northwest corner of Bremen and 20th streets stood where a neighbor later put out hay over new grass seed. Photograph by Michael R. Allen.
The simple act of putting out hay on a vacant lot is no big deal, but she did not have to do this. This was not her job. However, she lived down the street from the vacant lot and wanted to see grass grow there. This was the start of a conversation in which I listened and she told. By the end of our conversation I found out that every day she saw another building being demolished. I could tell that part of her wanted to leave and part of her wanted to stay. All too often citizens on the north side have been given that choice. Keep the hope, or leave. Fight for you community, or move on. Not every citizen has a choice when it comes to what they see out of their window. Here are some of the buildings that she may have seen fall.
Photographs by Michaela Burwell-Taylor
Michaela Burwell-Taylor served as a Preservation Research Office intern from January 2011 through May 2012.
It’s a good thing that we have the myth of a “Team Four Plan,” because that allows us to ignore the convergence of neglectful property owners, ineffective aldermen, minimal city planning oversight and new-development-obsessed community development corporations that are more responsible for the depletion of north St. Louis than consultants who prepared a memorandum nearly forty years ago. A close read of that document does not yield the phrase “College Hill” even once, so the blame for that neighborhood’s despair lies elsewhere.
The blame for the impending demolition of the privately-owned one-part commercial block at 3773-3783 West Florissant Avenue, at the intersection of Prairie Avenue, can at least partially be laid upon recent rains that besieged a weak parapet wall that has now fallen into the building. Yet the rains are not why the building has been listed as a vacant building since 1990, and when the waters pour upon a vacant lot for the next few decades we will have to trace the demise of commercial life at the intersection further back than 2012.
On February 3, the Building Division issued a demolition permit to Transformation Christian Church and Outreach Center for the house at 4205 Page Boulevard in the Vandeventer neighborhood. No doubt the church needs the land for a noble purpose. No doubt also that the house was in good condition at demolition. And no doubt at all that one less house in Vandeventer is one less family in north St. Louis. Buildings fall, people scatter.
Forty years ago today, demolition work started at the conjoined Pruitt and Igoe housing projects. On March 16, 1972, the St. Louis Housing Authority took down half of building A-16 in the Pruitt side of the project through an explosive blast. This was followed by a larger blast that took down all of double-module tower C-15 on April 21, 1972. These two spectacular demolition events led to the ultimate decision to demolish all of Pruitt-Igoe’s remaining 31 towers in 1976 and 1977. Yet on March 16, 1972, the St. Louis Housing Authority was not attempting to kill modernism, high-rise public housing or even Pruitt-Igoe. Instead, the Authority was trying to save these things.
In early 1972, the St. Louis Housing Authority created a task force of local and Department of Housing and Urban Development officials to examine physical interventions that might alleviate the problems at Pruitt-Igoe. The biggest challenge then was vast oversupply of housing units. Fewer than 400 of the over 2,800 units in the 33 towers was occupied. The St. Louis Housing Authority was faced with a need to reduce the unit count and eliminate vacant buildings in order to improve conditions for occupied buildings. Yet the fractional rent collection on the complex made solutions difficult to finance.
The locations of the three towers slated for blast, amrked on a 1959 U.S. Geological Survey photograph of the Pruitt and Igoe projects.
The task force elected to explore reducing the towers’ heights to four stories — a somewhat ironic move given that early plans had called for a low-rise development. The 1947 city Comprehensive Plan had advocated low-rise garden apartments on the site, and architect Minoru Yamasaki’s first concept for the project consisted of four and six story buildings. The St. Louis Housing Authority, under the leadership of Director Thomas Costello, elected to experiment with reducing floor heights.
However, recognizing the surplus of buildings and the need for experimentation, Costello successfully sought HUD permission to demolish three buildings in the project. These demolitions would allow for experimentation in demolition techniques to assess value engineering of the floor removal, and they also would allow the Authority to create a park in the center of the project. At one point, the Authority even explored retaining the rubble from the wrecked buildings as a sort of bizarre landscape feature.
The south face of a vacant single-module tower at Pruitt-Igoe. (Source: State Historical Society of Missouri.)
On the morning of March 16, 1972, Costello obtained a building permit for demolition of three towers, to be taken down by explosive blast. The St. Louis Housing Authority selected three towers at the center of the project, along Dickson Street (the only east-west public thoroughfare on the site, and the dividing line between the Pruitt and Igoe projects). The Authority chose towers A-16 and C-15 south of Dickson, and tower C-3 north of Dickson. C-3 would never be demolished by blast. The towers chosen included one of the 180-foot-wide single module towers, A-16, and two 360-foot-wide double module towers, C-3 and C-15. The Authority estimated the cost of demolishing the three towers at $12,000. Over $35 million in bonded construction debt was still owed on Pruitt and Igoe.
The St. Louis Housing Authority hired Dore Wrecking Company of Kawkawlin, Michigan, to conduct the demolition. St. Louis wreckers had never worked with large-scale explosives. Dore Wrecking in turn subcontracted the explosive work to a colorful firm in Towson, Maryland, named Controlled Demolition, Inc. Jack Loizeaux founded Controlled Demolition in 1947, and the company had experience using explosive methods to take down many buildings around Baltimore. The well-publicized Pruitt-Igoe blasts would make the company famous. Controlled Demolition would become the nation’s top firm for explosive demolition, and its future projects would include the Hudson’s Department Store in Detroit, the Kingdome in Seattle, and parts of Yamasaki’s World Trade Center in New York.
Building A-16 collapsing on March 16, 1972.
For A-16, Controlled Demolition planned to take down only half of the tower by blast. There was electrical equipment in the basement that the St. Louis Housing Authority wished to protect, so the other half would be taken down by crane and wrecking ball. Controlled Demolition placed specially-designed dynamite sticks into holes drilled in the building’s concrete upright columns. The detonation would start at the base of the building, to weaken its support, and travel upward.
On March 16, the demolition event was set for 1:30 p.m. At that time, officials postponed it to 2:15 p.m. That time arrived, and wreckers realized that the blast machine had accidentally went along for a pick-up ride to Lambert International Airport. John D. Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, professed embarrassment at the less than punctual start of demolition. Yet the delays allowed for the blast to start after 3:00 p.m., when Pruitt School sent its elementary students home for the day. The students flocked to the demolition site.
Looking east down Dickson Street in December 2011. The sites of A-16 and C-15 are at right, while the site of C-3 is at left.
The blasts were heard as muffled gunshot-like sounds, and rather than send out a distress call, they were almost easy to miss. Upon the end of the blasts, the west half of A-16 collapsed in a rising clod of debris. Notable was that the building had lead paint used inside, and there had been no abatement. The slabs pancaked into a pile that would require hand wrecking to remove. Building A-16 was only 17 years old upon demolition, and its reinforced concrete structure was resistant to blast.
At the end of demolition, officials were confident in the methods of Controlled Demolition, and scheduled the second and more spectacular blast for April 21. Yet Thomas Costello told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “[t]his is only the first step, and there are many more to go. We don’t know what they will be at this time.” Pruitt-Igoe was not dead yet.
We are in the final stretch of the process of securing historic district status for most of the O’Fallon neighborhood. By early May, Preservation Research Office will have submitted the first of two National Register of Historic Places nominations that cover almost all of the historic neighborhood. The O’Fallon Park Historic District will encompass the areas east and south of O’Fallon Park, while the Fairground Park Historic District will encompass an area west of Fairgrounds Park south of Lee Avenue, north of Natural Bridge Avenue, west of Fair Avenue and east of Newstead Avenue.
The historic district designations are sponsored by the Acts Partnership with the assistance of Alderman Antonio D. French (D-21st). Work began last February on a 1,796-building survey that had led to the two historic district nominations currently being drafted.
The decision to split the neighborhood is based on subdivision history and development patterns. The area of O’Fallon west of Fairgrounds Park was first developed after the platting of White Place in 1859, but construction was slow. Additional subdivisions were Mary E. Burson’s Subdivision (1889), Fairground Place (1910), Lucille’s Fairground Park Addition (1912) and several others. Most of the building stock there dates to between 1910 and 1940, somewhat later than the northern part of O’Fallon that started development in the 1890s and largely built out by 1930. Like the northern part of the neighborhood, the area is remarkably intact. Here are a few photographs.
There is a row of castellated two-flats on the east side of the 4100 block of Harris Avenue.The 4100 block of Kossuth Avenue is on the north side of Fairgrounds Park.
Out of sight, out of mind? Not brick theft. Brick thieves continue to strike abandoned buildings in north city, although the territory of operation has shifted westward. Two years ago, brick theft was prevalent in JeffVanderLou and St. Louis Place. With many targets hit, and fewer vacant buildings left, those neighborhoods have seen a drop in activity. Today brick thieves are more likely to be working in The Ville, Greater Ville, Fountain Park, Fairgrounds and Lewis Place neighborhoods.
The house at 4477 Page Boulevard.
The thieves are even taking down buildings located on major thoroughfares in north St. Louis. Today I noticed two buildings damaged by obvious illegal demolition activity whose locations are very prominent. The first of these was at 4477 Page Boulevard, just east of Taylor Avenue in Lewis Place. This vacant building may have been marred by fake stone veneer and heavy paint, but its solid structure was intact until very recently. The house stands not far from the campus of Ranken Technical College, and on a block where most buildings are occupied.
On January 17, the National Park Service listed in the National Register of Historic Places three historic districts in and an amended and expanded historic context for The Ville neighborhood. Due to lack of contiguous historic fabric, The Ville is not eligible for listing as single historic district. All National Register listings are made using the requirements of Historic and Architectural Resources of the Ville Multiple Property Submission (MPS), first created in 1999.
The Herman Dreer House (built 1930) at 4335 Cote Brilliante Avenue is at left; it was listed in the National Register in 2009. Now the rest of its block is within the National Register-listed Marshall School Neighborhood in The Ville Historic District.
Until last month, The Ville MPS lacked a section that would enable listing of groups of residential and commercial buildings associated with general trends of African-American settlement between 1910 and 1950. Buildings had to be associated with significant institutions or individuals. Most building stock in The Ville is the backdrop for significant twentieth century history — a context that preserves the character of an entire era of significant cultural activity. Listing intact groups of buildings helps preserve the sense of place enjoyed by Annie Malone, Herman Dreer, Charles Henry Turner, Julia Davis and other prominent African-Americans who either lived or worked in the neighborhood in its heyday.
The city’s Cultural Resources Office (CRO) staff rewrote the Historic and Architectural Resources of the Ville MPS document, adding a well-written and must-read section (“Context III: The Ville as the Product of Residential Segregation Policies, 1910-1950”) that documents the larger settlement history as well as “registration requirements” for the building stock long not covered by the document. The Preservation Research Office submitted the three small historic districts that are the first to be nominated under the new section.
The three districts are not the only small residential districts eligible in The Ville, but are the only ones identified as eligible in The Heart of the Ville architectural survey conducted in 2009 and 2010. Additional surveys should be funded to identify other potential districts in The Ville. Meantime, there now are 90 more buildings eligible for historic tax credits in The Ville!
Creating National Register of Historic Places historic district designations often is straightforward work — a consultant delineates the boundary of an eligible area dense with urban building stock. Then there are depleted neighborhoods in north St. Louis, where the levels of demolition make defensible boundaries more difficult. With extensive demolition marring its streetscapes, The Ville is no exception. Yet The Ville has a historic importance as the cultural center of African-American life in St. Louis rivaled only by the lost Mill Creek Valley.
Since 1987, The Ville has been a Local Historic District with restrictions on demolition, but until recently little of it had National Register of Historic Places status. Beyond the great cultural honor, that status makes available federal and state rehabilitation tax credits — the programs that revived Dick Gregory Place in the western end of the neighborhood. Since taking office in 2007, Alderman Sam Moore (D-4th) has pushed to find solutions for historic preservation of The Ville’s buildings, many of which face the wrecking ball in the absence of incentives for their reuse. One of the city’s most important neighborhoods seemed to be disappearing over the last few decades, but finally there may be a change in direction.
This historic view shows Homer G. Phillips Hospital under construction in 1936. Areas to the south and west of the hospital were included in the recent "Heart of the Ville" architectural survey.
Between August 2009 and August 2010, under contract to city government, the Preservation Research Office (PRO) completed the first intensive architectural survey of the heart of St. Louis’ fragile yet historically significant African-American neighborhood The Ville. The “Heart of the Ville” survey was the result of the successful St. Louis Cultural Resources Office (CRO) application for a Historic Preservation Grant to survey the Ville neighborhood, a local historic district with outstanding significance and uneven integrity. PRO evaluated 368 primary resources and 49 secondary resources, all buildings, to form the basis for historic district nominations. As of this writing, three small Ville historic districts are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places based on the survey results. (See subsequent post.)
The Tudor Revival home and residence of African-American physician Dr. Leo Commissiong stands at 4201 Aldine Avenue. Built in 1931 and designed and built by F.L. Whittaker, this house could be individually eligible if more research on Dr. Commissiong established him as a significant individual.The houses at 4242 and 4246 W. Garfield Avenue are among several raised-basement Italianate-style homes in the survey area. These residences were built circa 1890.
The survey was designed as a cooperative effort between the City of St. Louis CRO and Lynn Josse and Michael Allen at PRO. In November, 2009, PRO signed a contract with the city to provide a reconnaissance survey of 300 properties within the boundaries of the Ville neighborhood. Because this number would include fewer than half of the potentially historic residential and commercial properties within the originally identified survey area, CRO and the contractors targeted a much smaller set of blocks within the Ville. The new boundaries were selected based on the level of threat to the targeted resources.
A base map used by the consultants in the survey report. The cyan lines indicate the districts ultimately created from the survey results.
This survey differed from many others because the neighborhood has already been the subject of intensive study over three decades. In 1983-84, Landmarks Association of St. Louis conducted a reconnaissance survey of the Ville. In 1987, the City of St. Louis designated most of the Ville neighborhood as a local historic district. Two years later, the National Park Service (NPS) rejected certification of the Ville Local Historic District — a process that allowed other neighborhoods to have both local and national designation — due to extensive building loss in parts of the district. Consequently, the Historic and Architectural Resources of the Ville Multiple Property Submission was developed by Landmarks Association of St. Louis and approved by the National Park Service in 1999. The MPS offers three contexts under which individual buildings or groups could be listed in the National Register. The contexts are: “Black Settlement in the Ville, 1865-1910” and “The Ville as a Center for African-American Culture, 1910-1950”. The MPS establishes registration requirements for Institutional Buildings but no other types, stating that this is “the first phase of what is hoped to be a long-term project of evaluating and registering properties in the Ville.”
