Category: North St. Louis

Categories
Baden Demolition North St. Louis Preservation Board

Preservation Board to "Reconsider" Lutheran Altenheim Home Decision

by Michael R. Allen

The Preservation Board of the City of St. Louis meets May 26 to consider several items. One item that jumps out to me on the agenda is a “request for reconsideration” of a demolition permit for the old Lutheran Altenheim Home in the Baden area of north city. The owners, multi-state residential-care operators Hillside Manor LLC, have already contracted with Spirtas for demolition and started removing interior items. In April, they appealed the permit denial of the staff of the Cultural Resources Office to the Preservation Board, which upheld the denial.

While Hillside Manor has no use for the old building, and it stands in an awkward spot between Hillside Manor and another residential care facility, they have yet to prove that they need to demolish the building, or that they have considered other uses of the building.

Thankfully their “request for reconsideration” goes to the Preservation Board and not to the Board of Alderman as legislation. However, the Preservation Board should refuse reconsideration. No doubt that Hillside Manor will be pushing some high number on rehab costs that would be a “financial hardship” under the Preservation Review Ordinance. If so, it’s hogwash — Hillside Manor has expanded into a large network of locations and does not seem to be short on money for expansion.

There still are uses for the old building, but they would require creative thinking. It might make a great apartment building if more parking could be created. (Has Hillside Manor considered allowing a developer to build a second level of parking over their existing lot?)

Categories
North St. Louis Riverfront

You, Government


Drawing seen on a railroad embankment near the St. Louis approach to the Merchants Bridge.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

Taxpayers Cutting the Lawn for Allston Alliance

by Michael R. Allen

On Saturday morning, passers-by on 10th Street downtown may have seen the city Forestry Division crew trimming the tall grass and weeds along the east wall of the vacant Cass Avenue Schnucks.

This publicly-funded trimming is odd because the building is privately owned by the Allston Alliance, a company whose registered agent is developer John Steffen. The Allston Alliance purchased the property on December 28, 2005 with a $2.8 million loan from Corn Belt Bank and Trust Company of Pittsfield, Illinois.

Routinely, Forestry will trim vacant lots and bill the owners. This agreement isn’t uncommon. However, Allston Alliance has a for-lease sign on the building, a large loan and a prominent developer’s involvement. Can’t they mow their own grass without taxpayers’ fronting the money? Perhaps they should have sought a loan large enough to cover grounds maintenance.

Categories
Infrastructure North St. Louis Old North

Trash Collection and City Block 1130

by Michael R. Allen

The Refuse Division missed pick-up of the one refuse dumpster on City Block 1130 — our block — starting on Friday, May 19. They missed pick-up on the following Tuesday and Friday. By Tuesday, people had started dumping trash into the yard waste dumpster on the block. We simply walked our trash to a business-sized dumpster the next block west that sits behind a vacant lot where a storefront building stood until the late 1980’s.

Complaint to the Citizens’ Service Bureau led to the trash in both the refuse and yard waste dumpsters being collected yesterday evening.

The incident reminded me of how depopulated Old North St. Louis remains, and how similar conditions are here to those found in the small towns of southern Illinois where I grew up. In both places, one must not expect any luxury or regularity to life, even in trash collection. There simply are not enough people in either place to keep things on schedule. Times like these can set people into a rage, and lead some to abandon a neighborhood. To a country-born fellow like myself, I simply shrug at the uncollected waste and take my trash to the next dumpster. Where I grew up, we burned our trash outdoors!

The 1897 Whipple fire insurance map shows 14 buildings on the irregularly-shaped City Block 1130 (almost a triangle formed by 14th, Wright and Sullivan streets). Today, there are four. (We own one and the sites of six others.) A quick estimate of households in 1897 is twenty-two; today, there are three. One dumpster for three households is a luxury by 1897 standards. Perhaps today it is, too — although I hope that the Refuse Division is not trying to phase out collection on our block.

Categories
Historic Preservation Hyde Park Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North

Emigrant Home, Turnverein on Missouri Preservation’s Most Endangered List

by Michael R. Allen

Missouri Preservation, formerly the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, announced its 2006 Most Endangered Historic Places list at a press conference in Fulton last Saturday.

Among the thirteen places are the storm-damaged Nord St. Louis Turnverein and the Mullanphy Emigrant Home on the near north side of St. Louis. Another St. Louis-area building made the list: the Mark Sappington House in Crestwood, built in 1840 and threatened with demolition for a strip mall.

The list may draw greater attention statewide to the plight of these buildings. Across the state, St. Louis has a strong reputation as a leader in historic rehabilitation efforts, so people may take our forward movement for granted. The truth is that the city’s north side continues to lose buildings at an alarming rate with no end in sight. Hopefully the inclusion of the near north side buildings will show people that great architecture requires political and economic maintenance, even (especially?) in a city on the rebound from decline.

Thanks go to Karen Bode Baxter for nominating the Turnverein and the Emigrant Home at the last minute.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

1445 Monroe: A $250,000 House?

by Michael R. Allen

There is an old front-gabled, one-story shotgun house in Old North St. Louis at 1445 Monroe Street. This little home is clad in a permastone-like material but retains pretty elaborate wooden tracery along the front gable. I would guess that the home dates to the early 1880s.

This house sits directly across the street from the block face where a partnership between the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance has rescued three buildings from vacancy, including two old buildings that needed front walls rebuilt. This partnership assembled financing using 11 different sources of funding and spent over $250,000 per finished unit in the ongoing restoration of buildings like these.

Meanwhile, Noble Development Company purchased the house at 1445 Monroe on March 9, 2006, and the house is now vacant. Noble Development Company is apparently part of the “Blairmont” family of companies (link to an in-progress site of documentation) and now owns around 250 properties. While responsible developers are spending $250,000 per unit on buildings in need of intense rehab, the guns behind Blairmont won’t even spend $1,000 on each of its many properties, that include overgrown lots as well as buildings like the James Clemens, Jr. House.

Then again, someday people may be paying $250,000 for a house at 1445 Monroe — but not the modest but lovely house on the site now. Perhaps the street name will be changed by then. #14 Ingenuity Drive, anyone?

Categories
James Clemens House North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

Deadline for Sale of Clemens House Is Today

by Michael R. Allen

Readers may recall that on February 10, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Lisa Van Amburg dismissed without prejudice a lawsuit by the Building Division against Blairmont Associates Limited Corporation over that company’s neglect of the Clemens House. The dismissal was based upon an agreement between Blairmont and the City Counselor’s office that gave the absentee owners 90 days to sell the house or face re-filing of the suit.

The 90-day deadline is May 10, today.

Blairmont still owns the Clemens House. Unless a last-minute sale has yet to be reported, Blairmont has failed to meet the terms of the agreement. Hopefully the City Counselor’s Office will not fail to meet their terms and will re-file the case.

If rumors that Blairmont is a front for McEagle Development and/or the Pyramid Companies are true, one wonders why they would continue to show such reckless attention-getting behavior. Then again, aside from a handful of blogs, who is reporting on Blairmont or the Clemens House? The Post-Dispatch published one article by Jake Wagman in December but has been silent ever since.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation North St. Louis Old North

Mullanphy Emigrant Home Owner Has Applied For Demolition Permit

by Michael R. Allen

Paul Hopkins, owner of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, has applied for a demolition permit for the building. One month has passed since the building was hit by a storm, and no firm plan has emerged for the building.

Categories
land use North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North Urbanism

The South End of Old North

by Michael R. Allen

The southern end of Old North St. Louis — which includes the National-Register-listed Mullanphy and Sts. Cyril and Methodius historic districts — has been recently cut off from the more vibrant part of the neighborhood by two unfortunate grid-busting, suburban-style housing projects and cut off from downtown by vacant lots, fast food restaurants and automobile and truck yards. Demolition has been rampant, and truck-related businesses own many buildings here. Speculators have seized some of the area, including an impressive half-block owned by Blairmont Associates LC. There is one city block — bounded by Tyler on the south, 13th on the west, Chambers on the north and Hadley on the east — where not a single building stands.

Yet the last few weeks have seen signs of life no one could have predicted: a side-gabled, two-and-a half-story house at 2111 N. 13th Street that is the last building on its block is undergoing renovation; someone purchased an LRA-owned building at 1723 N. 13th Street in March and has already made progress on rehab; the owner of a corner tavern at the southeast corner of Howard and 14th streets has taken down part of a brick wall for relaying. These rehabs are by no means historic, and in the case of 2111 N. 13th, maddening for a preservationist to observe. Yet given the economy of that end of Old North, even these projects are somehow comforting — rather than crumbling shells, we have two bad rehabs to critique. (We will need to go a long way before even contemplating local district standards on acceptable alterations.)

The strangest event lately had to be the revival that took place over the weekend on the south end of that totally-vacant city block. A church group threw up a tent, put out folding chairs and a port-a-potty, and brought in preachers and bands. The scene was almost surreal, especially amid the stormy weather of the last few days.

Hopefully, someone will make a more long-term investment in that block, which would make a great location for modern infill housing. In fact, I would love to see both the 1970s-era Murphy-Blair Apartments and the Bristol Place Townhouses developments fall to the wrecking ball for a large-scale infill project. With vacant land to the north of both projects along Monroe Street, a new project with restored street grid would meet the North Market Place redevelopment project. With rehab of the remaining historic buildings in this area, reclamation of the Blairmont land for responsible use, and the stabilization of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, this end of Old North would blossom.

It’s comforting that a few good things are happening despite the barriers of the two housing projects. Yet there’s no way much else will happen until the barriers are removed.

Categories
Housing Hyde Park North St. Louis Severe Weather

3512 N. 19th Street, Blown Down

by Michael R. Allen

The alley house largely intact, November 19, 2005. Photograph by Michael R. Allen.



The alley house after its wall collapse, April 8, 2006. Photograph by Claire Nowak-Boyd.

The high winds of April brought a cruel fury to the near north side of St. Louis. Spectacular damage sustained on April 2 by the landmark Mullanphy Emigrant Home on 14th Street and the Nord St. Louis Turnverein on Salisbury Street was followed by the total destruction of a smaller building a few days later. Late on April 7, the alley house at 3512 N. 19th Street fell to the winds of the sort that must have inspired T.S. Eliot’s famed quote. The entire western wall, along 19th Street, collapsed and took down most of the roof and second floor, leaving only three walls to contain a pile of rubble that spilled out onto the street.

View of eastern elevation. Photograph by Claire Nowak-Boyd.

The plain two story flat-roofed house stood behind the house at 1530 Mallinckrodt Street, near the head of Garden Street. Construction of the house, which likely housed four households, likely dates to the early 1890s, but the house fell vacant nearly one hundred years later as became part of the city government’s inventory of vacant buildings in 1989. With little interest in Hyde Park in recent years, and even less interest in alley houses, the fine building was only waiting for its demise. No one could have guessed that it would come spectacularly around midnight, just moments before the editors of Ecology of Absence would come upon it while driving home.

View southeast from the corner of 19th and Mallinckrodt streets. The vacant building to the left is privately owned. Photograph by Michael R. Allen.

Sadly, this block has been suffering lately; in October, the Bernard Kettman House at 1522-24 Mallickrodt caught fire and now sits condemned and vacant. Other buildings on the 1500 block of Mallinckrodt are vacant or in disrepair.