Category: North St. Louis

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Historic Preservation Hyde Park North St. Louis Preservation Board

Preservation Board Denies Demolition Permits in Hyde Park, Dogtown

by Michael R. Allen

At yesterday’s meeting of the Preservation Board, the board unanimously voted to deny both Hyde Park demolition permits sought by Alderman Freeman Bosley (D-3rd) and the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA). The alderman and the city’s real estate wing wanted to level both of the frame houses at 3953 and 3961 Blair Avenue, which the LRA has owned since 2001. Staff from the Cultural Resources Office recommended approving demolition of the modest but mostly intact Italianate house at 3953 Blair while denying the permit for the rare Greek Revival house a few lots down. While the dire circumstances in Hyde Park may suggest such either-or piecemeal decision-making, what the neighborhood needs is comprehensive planning. Neither building is structurally unsound, and frame buildings of such size and age are becoming rare in the city no matter what architectural style. (Style is important in appraising the significance of individual buildings, although a trivial concern in terms of building successful neighborhoods where many factors must be balanced.) Steve Patterson and I each spoke in favor of preserving the two buildings.

The demolition permit for the house at 6452 Nashville in Dogtown also was denied. The owners paid almost $100,000 for the house only to apply for a demolition permit without a redevelopment plan. Huh? This is one of the city’s most stable neighborhoods, after all, making their application somewhat baffling.

Another good vote from the board was a 4-1 vote (with Mary Johnson dissenting) to defer consideration of plans for two model homes at 1922 and 1928 Whittier in The Ville. Frankly, the plans were terrible in terms of proportion, ornament, size and compatibility with context although Johnson saw redeeming qualities in their “French Victorian” style. Developer Sandra Nobles certainly did well in explaining the need to build on vacant lots in the Ville, but she could not answer questions about the design very well. More time and input from the staff at Cultural Resources should lead to better design.

One noteworthy presence of yesterday’s meeting was that Alderman Terry Kennedy (D-18th), who is a member of the board, was present. This was his first appearance at a board meeting in nearly one year.

Categories
Hyde Park North St. Louis Preservation Board South St. Louis The Ville

Preservation Board Agenda Available

by Michael R. Allen

This morning, the St. Louis Preservation Board posted the agenda for today’s meeting. It’s fairly short, actually, and no item is very controversial. Yet who has time to read the whole agenda and the summaries before the meeting if it’s only posted in the morning?

Among the items are the proposed demolition of two city-owned vacant houses on Blair Avenue in Hyde Park, the demolition of a house in Dogtown owned by an investment company, permits for lackluster new houses in the Ville and some appeals related to renovation work in violation of local historic district ordinances.

Also this morning, Steve Patterson of Urban Review posted his thoughts on the Preservation Board: “The Preservation Board A Public Hearing Or Not?”

The Preservation Board meets at 4:00 p.m. on the 12th floor of the building at 1015 Locust Street in downtown St. Louis.

Categories
Historic Preservation North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

On Wooden Windows

by Michael R. Allen

Rick Bonasch wrote an interesting post on wooden window restoration for STL Rising.

What do we think about keeping old wooden windows?

Our house has seventeen window openings. Originally, the front four windows were one-over-one while all others were two-over-two. One previous owner replaced the four third-floor windows with decent aluminum one-over-one windows that fit the existing openings pretty closely. The next owner had a fire in the house and ended up replacing eight windows with ill-fitting one-over-one white vinyl windows, two of which are on the front elevation. This owner did not maintain the historic wooden windows, which have problems.

Our plan? Retain the aluminum windows for a few years, since they provide good insulation, fit the openings well and are barely visible from the street. I will restore all of the wooden windows myself except for the two on the back wall; the plan had been to start this fall but with a back staircase that needs major repairs I’ll likely not get started until the spring. The back wall is going to be taken down and relayed, so it’s easier to install new windows there. We are using custom-order double-pane, low-E Marvin windows that are solid wooden two-over-two units with authentic dividers. This is a southern exposure, so the new windows make sense in terms of energy conservation. For the openings plugged with vinyl, we will be removing each one and replacing with other authentic wooden Marvin windows like the others, except we will be using their “Tilt-Pack” model designed to fit existing jambs. This replacement will take place inthe spring if we ever close on our loan.

The Marvin windows may upset purist readers, but they were actually recommended to us by a rehabber in Old North who used them on his house, which he and his wife restored to near-exact 1879 appearance. At between $500-600 an opening, the Tilt-Pack units are a lot more affordable than authentic milled replicas, which can run upwards of $800 for sashes before hanging and glazing. they are also easy for a novice like myself to install, so I won’t have to pay anyone to hang them for me. The added energy efficiency is a huge bonus; we won’t need storm windows on them. Best of all, they will look very close to the original windows, and be real wood on the interior and exterior, so our own purist hearts will be placated.

Now, mind you, if all seventeen openings had their original wooden windows, the plan would be to restore each and every one of them. Since that is not the case, we are choosing to balance historic appearance, cost and our time — and still get real wooden windows.

Categories
Architecture Martin Luther King Drive North St. Louis Urbanism Wells-Goodfellow

Hope on Martin Luther King Drive

by Michael R. Allen

I spent some of my morning talking with a building owner in the Wellston Loop area. He has big plans for his big building, the former J.C. Penney store at 5930 Martin Luther King Drive. (This is the International style gem designed by William P. McMahon and built in 1948.) He envisions the building as catalyst for rejuvenating the area, and seems optimistic despite acknowledging forty years of neglect of the area and of Martin Luther King Drive in general.

The neglect is formidable. On the drive out to his building from downtown, I passed the sites of a dozen buildings that were demolished within my lifetime and whose details I clearly recall. I passed even more buildings that sit empty, or in use, or in some derelict state between. I passed two buildings with significant recent collapses. I passed one row of flats and a corner commercial building under demolition despite being in good condition. I was overcome with melancholy as I considered that many of these buildings won’t survive my lifetime, or even the next decade, and the fifty-odd blocks of a street that supposedly honors to good work of Dr. King will be virtually unrecognizable to me by middle age, and already is unrecognizable to people old enough to recall its heyday.

Even at the time that Franklin and Easton avenues were renamed for Dr. King in 1972, the conditions of the buildings on the street were not great. At the time, some critics felt that the legacy of Dr. King was diminished by placing his name on a street with a sad future. The sad future is now, and the street name certainly seems cynical.

Hopefully, the J.C. Penney building and others on the street will survive, and find good owners, and provide momentum for development along here. Aldermen O.L. Shelon (4th Ward) and Jeffrey Boyd (22nd Ward, including the Wellston Loop), whose wards include most of the street in the city, are pushing for redevelopment that is architecturally sensitive. They can only do what is politically possible, though, before it is up to the market to generate the capital needed to revive sections of the street. May that time come before all is lost on the great street with a great name.

Categories
Academy Neighborhood Demolition North St. Louis

5111 Delmar Boulevard, Demolished

by Michael R. Allen

LOCATION: 5111 Delmar Boulevard; Academy; Saint Louis, Missouri
DATE OF CONSTRUCTION: 1906
ARCHITECT: William Lucas
BUILDER: McKelvey Construction Company
OWNER: Land Reutilization Authority

The death march on Delmar Boulevard (formerly and more properly “Avenue”) continues with the demolition of the three-story commercial building at 5111 Delmar in September 2006. Slowly, the stretch of Delmar between Kingshighway on the east and Union on the west has lost over half of its buildings. This building was rather plain even for this section of the street, but still handsome. It began collapsing from the center and eventually was aided in its self-started collapse by a demolition crew.

The bottom floor contained two storefronts on either side of a neoclassical entrance arch. Above, a mostly non-ornamented wall of brown brick contained a subtle Arts-and-Crafts brick motif to anyone who looked close enough. A projecting copper cornice, long since pulled off by thieves, would have given the building a more refined appearance. The upper floors were apartments and may have been carved into a rooming house, as many such buildings along Delmar were.

Detail of terra cotta entrance ornament (Michael R. Allen).

Nowadays, Delmar is fraught with extreme visual poverty from its eastern terminus downtown to the Demar Loop, where prospects brighten. The city’s great dividing line at times seems as dour and forbidding as the Berlin Wall. Visual beauty on the street could neutralize its terrible reputation as the city’s leading segregation device. After all, that segregation has long since been as much about depravity as it has been about race — south of Delmar isn’t exclusively white, but it is a land where one might have a better chance at feeling like the city has an urban future.

Categories
Fire JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Houses at 3654-60 Cook Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

The fire marshal’s car sits in front of the houses on Cook Avenue after the fire on August 28.

On the night of August 28, 2006, a fire struck the two turreted houses at the southeast corner of Cook and Spring avenues. These two houses are splendid examples of how the Romanesque Revival was interpreted by local architects and made part of the city’s turn-of-the-century architectural vernacular. They also illustrate the St. Louis tendency to group houses that re so similar to each other that at first glance they seem like copies, while in fact the details and ornament are completely different even as materials, style and proportion are synchronized. According architect Paul Hohmann: “The buildings are actually two pairs of townhomes, for a total of four units. The two portions are connected only at the center, with the projecting fronts separated to appear like two large mansions. … Unfortunately the way the two halves were joined at the middle at the third floor would have provided an easy conduit for a fire to spread from either side.”

Continue reading “Houses at 3654-60 Cook Avenue”
Categories
Central West End Local Historic District North St. Louis Preservation Board South St. Louis

Chairman Callow, Boring Buildings and a Denied Demolition Permit

by Michael R. Allen

At its Monday meeting, the Preservation Board elected a new chairperson: Richard Callow, the public relations consultant who edits Mayor Slay’s campaign website. New board member David Richardson nominated Callow after Melanie Fathman nominated architect Anthony Robinson, a reasonable voice who would have done well in the position. Callow received the votes of Richardson, Luis Porello, Mary “One” Johnson (who presided over the vote rather clumsily), John Burse and new member Michael Killeen. Robinson received Fathman’s vote, and the nominated parties abstained. Mary Johnson was the only nominee for vice chairperson, although she so quickly called the vote after her own nomination was seconded that observers at the crowded meeting wondered if there was a chance for another nomination.

Callow demonstrated the tenor of his chairmanship by conducting the meeting much more efficiently than usual, although hopefully his motivation is to respect people’s time and not to glide over potential controversy. His customary pointed questions certainly enhance his chairmanship and give good direction to debate often marred by divergence and anecdote.

Is Callow’s election a political move or a pragmatic one? While the Preservation Board’s decisions can be overturned by less democratic bodies like the Planning Commission, the decisions often hold sway public perception of urban design and preservation issues. The approval of a plan or demolition permit by the Preservation Board can give proponents great backup for painting opponents as unreasonable. Time will tell what game, if any, is being played here.

One wonders if Mayor Slay will again write about the Preservation Board in his blog, given the new circumstances.

The Board unanimously granted preliminary approval to a bad new development project that would demolish the South Grand YMCA for a stale, wide block of Chicago-style tedium. Claire Nowak-Boyd registered an objection.

Another unanimous vote included final approval of the condominium building at Euclid and Lindell proposed by Opus Development, which although improved in design has a few problems with the scale of its base along Euclid and with the unmitigated expanse of its shaft. Alderwoman Lyda Krewson and politico Lou Hamilton were in attendance, presumably to monitor this vote.

The Preservation Board denied the Department of Public Safety’s request to demolish the house at 5309 Cabanne. The denial seems superfluous given the approval of demolition of the YMCA Building, which seems better posed to find reuse in the near future than the house. Also, of course, denial of the permit will not stop water, wind and fire from taking their toll. However, I am glad that the Board and Cultural Resources Office staff still regard the integrity of Visitation Park as an important thing to preserve. That neighborhood stands to benefit from the creep of the Delmar Loop’s success.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Blairmont Goes to the Mall

by Michael R. Allen

The two-and-a-half-story, side-gabled house at 1416 Montgomery Street is Old North St. Louis is fairly nondescript. Its front elevation probably bowed years ago, and was taken down and relayed with a harder modern brick and newer fenestration. The rebuilt front wall is boring, although the side and rear walls show the house to be a late-19th-century house that could be restored to some more appropriate appearance.

But doing that work would take imagination, patience and a faith in the neighborhood’ renewal. You see, this modest dwelling is right across the alley from the so-called 14th Street Mall, the two blocks of commercial buildings fronting a part of north 14th Street closed in 1971 to form a pedestrian mall. The mall conversion killed the vitality of the commercial district, and by the 1990s only a few stores remained open. Today, the only occupied storefronts on the mall are a hair salon and a storefront church. Every other first floor is boarded or broken in, and the upper floors of the multi-story buildings have been empty even longer.

All of this is set to change, though, as a major collaborative redevelopment project is in the works. Most of the buildings on the mall are now owned by a partnership between the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, two organizations whose work is often miraculous. Imagine what they might do with 1416 Montgomery Street if they had the chance!

All we can do now is imagine, because at a recent Sheriff’s tax sale the house and its accompanying garage sold to one of the Blairmont companies. Although their purchases in Old North have slowed, they still wanted to buy a derelict building that needs to be included in the 14th Street project.

Perhaps Blairmont can rehab the building better and faster than the partnership. Perhaps I am a dog person. Perhaps someone will rebuild the buildings cleared for the Arch. Perhaps asbestos is actually a nutrient…

Categories
Demolition North St. Louis

Carpenters Building Demolished

Never been to the Carpenters Building before? Well, you missed your chance, because a developer demolished the Preston Bradshaw-designed building last month.

You can take some consolation is being able to read about the building here.

Categories
Demolition JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Lost: Carpenters’ Building

The author took all of the photographs used here on June 19, 2006.

by Michael R. Allen

This summer, St. Louis lost a building designed by noted architect Preston J. Bradshaw, and no one turned out to mourn its passing. In June, wreckers began dismantling his Carpenters Building (1930) at the southwest corner of North Grand Boulevard and Cozens Avenue. By this point in time, few observers could recall the glory days of this building as the home of the Carpenters’ District Council, now located in well-known quarters on Hampton Avenue. Few historians who may have noted the building’s pedigree passed by the building in recent years, and it largely went unnoticed. (No biographical sketches of Bradshaw note the Carpenters Building.) The building’s new owners didn’t care to study its history; they wrecked the building to build another section of the ungainly strip mall that is MLK Plaza.

Yet, once upon a time when Grand Avenue was a bustling thoroughfare, trade unionism was strong and architects of Bradshaw’s ability took commissions of all sizes, the Carpenters’ Building came to stand here. The union council built the building in 1930 for the cost of $50,000, which was substantial then. The design by Bradshaw is typical of the idiosyncratic Renaissance Revival style he employed frequently in the 1920s and early 1930s for hotel, apartment and office buildings. There is an abundance of buff terra cotta ornament at the base and crown of the building, while the shaft is an unadorned plane of brick. Here, the building is two stories, so the effect of this ornament program is quite different than on taller buildings that Bradshaw designed. Rather than accentuating height, here the design accentuated the width of the primary elevations, giving the building a stately presence worthy of one of the city’s most prominent thoroughfares. The abundance of terra cotta, manufactured by the Winkle Company of St. Louis, makes the short building project a message of abundance and tradition that suited the unions of the day. As with many of Bradshaw’s designs of that period, here he masterfully balances the Renaissance Revival idiom with a modern emphasis on form.

Bradshaw (1880-1949) designed many famous local buildings, including the Chase Hotel, Paul Brown Building, Coronado Hotel and, late in his career, the modernist Ford Apartments. He came to St. Louis in 1907 after having studied architecture at Columbia University and having briefly worked for McKim, Mead and White. He became known for his prowess at designing hotel and apartment buildings, and was among the best-known St. Louis architects of the first half of the twentieth century. His works are expressions of the optimism of the growing city as well as explorations of the possibility of modern architectural forms. Many of Bradshaw’s are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and have been restored in recent years.

The Carpenters Building is not among those that will be so cherished.