Around 5:30 pm this evening the Missouri House passed SB112 (New Markets Credit) that included an amendment to reduce the historic tax credit cap from $140 million to $90 million ($10 million cap on small projects) and another amendment to renew Paul McKee’s Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit. As each of you know, this is legislation that would significantly harm St. Louis’s efforts to continue essential revitalization of historic buildings. This revitalization creates jobs, leverages private investment, broadens the tax base, and preserves the unique historic environment that remains our biggest asset as a region. It’s imperative that we call on advocates in the Senate to speak out against this bill to defeat it.

Paul McKee’s credit has created exactly zero jobs while the historic tax credit has created over 43,000. Paul McKee has torn down irreplaceable historic buildings with no promise of redevelopment while the historic tax credit has had an enormous impact in returning similar historic buildings back to life and property tax rolls. Defeating SB112 and its amendments is the obvious choice for future economic development and historic preservation in St. Louis. Pleas urge our senators to defeat SB112, which will be discussed tonight or tomorrow.

Sen. Jamilah Nasheed: 573-751-4415, 314-409-5730 (c) | jamilah.nasheed@senate.mo.gov
Sen. Joe Keaveny: 573-751-3599 | joe.keaveny@senate.mo.gov
Sen. Scott Sifton: 573-751-0220, 314-631-0445 (c) | scott.sifton@senate.mo.gov

Today the St. Louis Beacon published a commentary by Preservation Research Office Director Michael Allen entitled “The Real Cost of Demolishing Cupples 7″. The article raises several questions, including:

Why can’t the city offer a comparable amount to the demolition funds in escrow for stabilization? The Building Division can’t come in and work on a building not owned by the city, but St. Louis Development Corporation could structure a deal where some money from another sources was available.

…

At a time when Great Rivers Greenway District has had to go to voters for a sales tax increase, why does the city need more publicly owned green space to maintain? South downtown has more holes than buildings, and does not need another empty space. The walk to Busch Stadium should be activated with retail and activity, not fenced grass.

With Cupples 7, the city is looking at spending almost $2 million in tax dollars to create a fenced lawn where a historic building once stood and remove a property from the tax roles. The venerable warehouse might not be the biggest loss — city government’s ability to protect economic assets and sense of place hang in the balance.

May marks the start of National Historic Preservation Month. Perhaps this spring’s sky shifts from dinge of gray to cloud-studded blue find me more introspective about my practice as a historic preservationist, but I keep questioning the impact and methods. Here are links to two recent places where I offer thoughts about what is right and wrong with mainstream historic preservation practice right now. Overall, I am drawn to the vibrancy of communities of people, and am exploring how the stewardship of buildings can support that.

A popular cause: The “flying saucer” at Council Plaza shows the power of popular preservation efforts.

Critical examination of the relationship of my practice to social needs has afforded almost a re-dedication. While I am not sure I ever will be the same “preservationist” I was in the past, I see the relationships between people and my work so much more clearly that I also can see its utility in ways I never saw before. People need preservation, and preservation needs people. Historic preservation has always been a social practice, but its power to serve people can often seem diluted when the lenses of economic development and professional practice are overlaid. Writing by Dolores Hayden, Daniel Bluestone, Camilo Jose Vergara and others suggest that a popular historic preservation practice is not only possible but already exists under dozens of other names.

Preservation is a team effort. Lindsey Derrington, Jeff Vines, randy Vines, Richard Henmi and Toby Weiss hold the Preserve Missouri award foe the flying saucer.

This week, in the rotunda of our state capitol, Missouri preservation bestowed a Preserve Missouri Award upon the “flying saucer” at Council Plaza. Rather than grant that award to the developer or architect of the renovation, which is common in preservation accolade-giving, Missouri preservation presented the award to a list of people whose interrelated efforts gave rise to mass support for preservation. Jeff and Randy Vines, Toby Weiss, Richard Henmi (who designed the building, completed in 1967), Aldermen Shane Cohn and Scott Ogilvie, PRO’s Lindsey Derrington and others received a collective award for their mass action. That’s what the preservation movement needs to do more often: recognize that buildings are made and remade by the masses, with people’s different roles adding up to a building’s preservation. The flying saucer shows that buildings that mean something to people become the biggest successes. Preservationists need to consider how the forces of architectural meaning work, and how they can’t be faked.

Preservationists at rest. Volunteers and neighborhood residents in Penrose during the Rebuilding Together home repair blitz in summer 2010. Landmarks Association of St. Louis gave the project its first “Community Preservation” award.

This introduction leads to two works that reflect my current thinking:

1. A Room Without A View?

Minneapolis’ Works Progress visited St. Louis last week to complete a series of events called “Whole City” that examined the artistic and cultural practices that are shaping St. Louis right now. The series culminated with an exhibit at the Luminary Center for the Arts. Asked to contribute an essay to the publication released at the event, I pulled together thoughts on the interconnected dynamics in preservation, urbanism, community art and “creative placemaking.” This piece is an attempt, not an answer; I am reflecting on how these practices can matter more to the people of St. Louis. The excellent critical publication Temporary Art Review republished the piece yesterday.

2. Hold That Thought: Last House Standing

The College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University presents a wonderful podcast called Hold That Thought produced by Claire Navarro. Last month Claire interviewed me about the psychology of preserving buildings in depleted neighborhoods. The resulting podcast examines Old North St. Louis specifically, with emphasis on why people there are so fiercely protecting of buildings in an urban landscape that some may no longer consider urban in terms of built or population density.

Historic Preservation Month offers a time to celebrate the social good of preservation of historic places. For us practitioners, hopefully it also finds us sharpening our self-awareness so that we can be better aids to the people and the buildings we love. Preservation can be a popular value, and preservationists should do everything we can to make that so.

The James Clemens, Jr. House: St. Louis’ Most Endangered House

Sunday, May 5, 2013
2:00 p.m.
Chatillon-DeMenil House, 3352 DeMenil Place
FREE

In 1858, James Clemens began building a magnificent country home on Cass Avenue outside of the central city. Designed by Patrick Walsh, the Clemens House embodied the principles of Palladian villa design while utilizing cast iron for man of its architectural elements, a rarity in St. Louis if not nationally. This grand house has gone through changes over the years, and today sits facing an uncertain future. Abandoned and neglected for the last twenty years, James Clemens’ house is the last antebellum mansion in St. Louis to not be restored or rehabilitated. Architectural historian Michael R. Allen will present the story of the house — past, present and future. This event is free.

at the Harry Hammerman House
219 Graybridge Rd. Ladue, MO 63124

Please join us at the mid-century modern Harry Hammerman House (1952), designed and built by Harry Hammerman following principles of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Hammerman House was rehabilitated in 2008 using the historic tax credit. We will contact legislators, including key St. Louis County-based opponents, urging them to preserve the historic tax credit, which is currently under a grave threat in the State Capitol. Written materials will be provided to guide your interactions. Wine and refreshments will also be available.

RSVP to Christian Frommelt:
christian.frommelt@gmail.com, or (314) 323-6854

The Missouri Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling issued yesterday affirming the Northside Regeneration redevelopment ordinances means “we’re open for business,” in the words of company leader Paul J. McKee, Jr. Of course since Circuit Court Judge Robert Dieker, Jr.’s July 2010 ruling invalidated those ordinances, Northside Regeneration has not really been doing much different. The company acquired 162 city-owned parcels in St. Louis Place and a two-year option on the Pruitt-Igoe site last year, demolished some buildings, convinced the Board of Aldermen to add the ailing “Bottle District” site into the project boundary, hired 17 lobbyists to push for extension of the controversial Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit in the state house and continued to meet with politicians and editorial boards.

Northside Regeneration’s foot print circa May 2009. The Bottle District land is not included here.

What the lack of a final legal ruling has meant is that both Northside Regeneration and the City of St. Louis have had a major excuse for not pursuing basic points engrained finely in the 2009 redevelopment agreement with the city. In terms of the built environment, McKee and officials in city government had repeatedly said that the pending Supreme Court ruling is the reason that dangerous half-demolished buildings cannot be removed, why historic buildings cannot be maintained, and why there can be no sale of Northside Regeneration’s curious supply of buildings in Old North outside of its boundaries.

Consequently, the people who should see the “need for development” most strongly are among those least impressed by Northside Regeneration’s much-touted “vision.” This is as much a failure of operations as it is in relationship-building. If Northside Regeneration truly is to be “open for business” it may consider that public relations are far more crucial to project longevity than the company’s penchant for making large campaign contributions. After all, city residents are going to be forfeiting sales tax revenues to the developer for years to come. The subsidy makes us investors — and investors need to see the balance sheet, right?

Then again, what some residents have begun to suspect is that Northside Regeneration is a land banking operation disguised as a development project. The proposed rewrite to the Distressed Areas Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act makes changes that extend remuneration for long-term ownership, change compensation for demolition for 50% to 100% of the costs and generally suggest that long-term holding is what is being incentivized, not large-scale urban redevelopment.

A very early public meeting on what became Northside Regeneration was hosted by Alderwomen April Ford-Griffin and Marlene Davis at Vashon High School in August 2007.

According to McKee and the Slay administration yesterday, those suspicions would be gravely mistaken. Development is coming soon. Then now is the time for answers to some of the questions that neighborhood preservationists have been asking for awhile. Before I present those questions, consider that they would be more potently – and transparently — answered in a public meeting. The last public meeting for Northside Regeneration was nearly four years ago. How about City Hall and Northside Regeneration booking the auditorium at Vashon High School — needs to be a public building, for obvious reasons — and holding a forum where residents can’t get some current answers?

Meantime, I will place a few questions related to my professional concerns (and these are as much directed at McKee as they are to City Hall which is supposed to be overseeing this project for us taxpayer-investors):

Northside Regeneration circulated this rendering of the James Clemens House complex back in 2010. Where do things stand now? And can we get some roof repairs?

Stripped of portico, here is what the James Clemens House looks like today.

What is the time line for rehabilitation of the James Clemens House? The James Clemens House at 1849 Cass Avenue (1860-1896) sits in shambles. The roof is deteriorating. The front door to the chapel has been wide open for months. The lawn is strewn with garbage and tree limbs. The front wall is collapsing. Northside Regeneration once promised to make preservation a priority, but its first plan fell apart. Will the complex be lost before the city takes action to renew the developer’s promise?

This bar on St. Louis Avenue brings people together, pays taxes and keeps the corner safe. Why should its owners face eminent domain?

What was that about eminent domain again? There has been a lot of talk but people need something placed in writing clear as crystal. The redevelopment ordinances leave eminent domain an open option, but obliquely — they don’t expressly authorize it but they don’t suspend its use through existing means. Everyone knows that once an area is blighted private property rights are thrown out the window. Yet Mayor Francis Slay and Mckee have stated that owner-occupants are safe in the Northside Regeneration foot print. Let’s get that in writing. Oh, but: what about small businesses? Why aren’t they safe too? Small businesses represent a form of personal wealth, and we know that eminent domain has been used to disempower African-American and poor St. Louisans for decades. It could easily do so again.

Northside Regeneration owns three houses on Old North’s only block without demolition. What gives?

Why won’t Northside Regeneration sell its parcels in Old North (including dozens of historic buildings)? Northside Regeneration owns an estimates 62 parcels in Old North outside of its project boundary. At least a dozen historic buildings, like those pictured above on the 1400 block of Hebert Street – Old North’s only block with no demolitions – are deteriorating under Northside Regeneration ownership. One recently burned to the ground, damaging adjacent occupied buildings. None of these properties are listed for sale or sport for-sale signs, and potential buyers have received conflicting answers about their availability. McKee told KMOX last month they are for sale. Are they?

2900 St. Louis Avenue (c. 1880) is one Northside Regeneration-owned building that supports a strong context and is in good condition. Will it be preserved?

Will Northside Regeneration create a list of properties to be rehabilitated as required by the redevelopment agreement? There are dozens of historic buildings owned by the company within historic districts , or in areas that are intact settings with occupied housing. The house shown here, at 2900 St. Louis Avenue, has no official historic status but sits in a very intact section of St. Louis Avenue facing the new Lindell Park Historic District. The redevelopment agreement requires a list of buildings to be rehabilitated with a timeline for taking steps toward rehabilitation. No one expects full rehabs right away, but selection and then intervention to stabilize and beautify these properties would be a sign of good faith. (This house ought to be one of the ones saved.)

Brick thieves might not ask permission, but Northside Regeneration is still liable for the conditions of its properties.

Will we stop seeing half-demolished “doll houses” any time soon? Northisde Regeneration’s frequent statement that it can’t demolish houses severely damaged by brick thieves until the Supreme Court ruled made little sense. These are hazardous sites, with potential for injury and lead paint and asbestos airborne toxicity. Reusable building material gets lost, and legitimate demolition jobs are lost. These sites must be demolished immediately. Other buildings proposed for demolition should be demolished legally so that these horrendous and unsafe brick-rustled monstrosities stop plaguing people’s neighborhoods.

There are questions that I have been asking for years about Northside Regeneration. Hopefully these will be answered in short time. What are other questions, readers?

A vacant lot on 14th Street in Old North.

In St. Louis, vacant land is a huge problem. Yet the details are small: a single lot here, a moribund city-owned red-brick house there, or a dead gas station down the block. As the city struggles to conjure systematic strategies for dealing with the vacancy and to gain rapid demand for land reuse — big solutions — some small solutions are emerging. Many business owners, neighbors and dreamers have conquered a building or a lot, often making a critical impact for a larger area.

Bistro Box, a finalist in the Sustainable Land Lab Competition.

The Sustainable Land Lab Competition, sponsored by Washington University in St. Louis, offers a moderate-sized method for vacant land reclamation. The competition secured four vacant parcels in the heart of the Old North St. Louis neighborhood, and funds to offer both two-year leases and $5,000 to implement practical, ready-to-build ideas for reusing them. The proximity of the lots might provide a sizable visual impact, depending on the four winners announced next week.

Sunflower+Project: STL, a finalist in the Sustainable Land Lab Competition.

Among the eight finalists chosen from the initial 48 submissions are the “Bistro Box,” a container cafe placed on 14th Street near Crown Candy Kitchen, and the Sunflower Project, which envisions an interim use of sunflower cultivation that also would aid soil remediation on a polluted vacant lot. Some might argue that these ideas are impractical or ephemeral — but they are not much like projects this city has ever tried before. New ideas are not “destined” to fail or work. New ideas carry the pulse of city’s best minds, without guaranteed results.

The great part about the Sustainable Land Lab Competition process is that these solutions are both malleable (a two-year lease offers a good test period) and transportable (they could be done on different sites, multiple sites or better sites). Also, the competition should encourage neighborhoods to take action now. All we have is now, the song goes — so let these ideas inspire more local, less-structured actions regionally. After all, the whole city came into being by furtive, sustainable land development. St. Louis remains an experiment.

SUSTAINABLE LAND LAB ANNOUNCEMENT:

Thursday, April 11
6:30 PM
Bridge, 1004 Locust Street

Disclaimer: I serve on the Sustainable Land Lab Competition Advisory Committee.

The Freie Gemeinde building in 2009.

A quick pass down North 20th Street gives a glimpse of an unassuming brick school house, surrounded by a concrete lot and a chain-link fence. In front of the building is a small market and behind it is a residential street. Upon closer inspection, you begin to notice more. It is made of a deep red brick, thirteen bays wide, two stories tall, with a limestone clad foundation and a porch dressed in cast-iron.

The building today.

Most recently used by the Youth and Family Center, but abandoned since 2009, the building has since not received much attention. This is obvious, as water damage has accumulated and now whole sections of walls are quickly crumbling. In a matter of weeks, the building’s stability drastically worsened and in late February the roof over the gymnasium collapsed, pulling down much of the second floor. As bad it the building looks, its history that would surprise most, with connections that reach farther than St. Louis. An inscription on a limestone block above the main entrance reads “Warheit Macht Frei: Schule aud Die Freien Congregation von Nord St. Louis” or “Truth Makes One Free: School of the Free Thinkers of North St. Louis.” The building, dating back to 1867 and expanded greatly in 1883, once housed the German-American group, Die Freie Gemeinde.

The stone above the entrance, added in the 1883 expansion of the building.

In 2011, Preservation Research Office completed the National Register of Historic Places listing for the St. Louis Place Historic District. Working under the direction of then-Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin, we made special effort to extend the eastern boundary of the district to encompass this building. This effort allowed the building to be eligible for historic rehabilitation tax credits, and everyone was hopeful that it would be a prime candidate for rehabilitation.

Historic view of the expanded Freie Gemeinde building.

Beginning in 1848, German intellectuals began fleeing their country after a series of failed political and economic revolutions. The United States saw a sharp influx of immigration as a result, with a large German community settling in St. Louis. (Think Dutchtown, Hyde Park, Anheuser-Busch, etc.) The Midwest in particular became a home to the Freie Gemeinde, a school of German thought with foundations in the Catholic and Protestant churches, from which it ultimately separated. Their main purpose was “to unite the foes of clericalism, official dishonesty and hypocrisy, and to unite the friends of truth, uprightness, and honesty.” It was a philosophy that embraced the individual instead of institution.

The rear elevation facing St. Louis Place Park showed signs of major damage when we visited in August 2012.

The Freie Gemeinde, which translates to “the free congregation,” believed that man has the basic right of applying knowledge of history and science to religion, choosing which aspects of faith are reasonable and which should be disregarded. The church fought against this individualized idea of religion, instead defining faith as an acceptance of dogma without question. The Freie Gemeinde also applied individuality to religious institution. They removed the hierarchal structure of the church, allowing for each congregation of Free Thought to exist on its own without a superior body. Churches came to be referred to as halls and a pastor or priest became a “speaker.” In a Freie Gemeinde Hall, the congregation attended lectures on subjects ranging from science to philosophy instead of the traditional sermon, even encouraging discussion during lectures. The group was ahead of their time and influential as immigrants in the Midwest. Today, the last remaining Freie Gemeinde exists in Sauk City, Wisconsin.

The Freie Gemeinde Building as it appeared after construction of the earliest norther section in 1867.

The building at 2930 N. 21st Street was, at one time, referred to with a full German name – Freie Gemeinde von Nord St. Louis und Bremen. The first Freie Gemeinde group in the United States formed in St. Louis in 1850, a leading example to other congregations that sprang up across the country. This was the first community center in the neighborhood and boasted a library of over 3,000 books in German. It was a large meeting hall for discussions and education in philosophy, literature, science, and other topics.

Three men associated with the Freie Gemeinde von Nord St. Louis, Preetorious, Danzer, and Schurtz are famous for their association with local German newspapers. As editors of the Westliche Post and the Anzeiger des Westens, they openly criticized religious oppression and slavery. The Naked Truth Monument in Compton Reservoir Park is dedicated to these three free thinking Germans. The bronze woman symbolizes truth, holding torches of enlightenment for both Germany and America. The inscription, in both English and German, tells of the German-Americans dedication to their adopted country. Just north, nestled between a market and a row of houses, the building where these men and many other German-Americans met and formed a community is crumbling and slipping away from public memory. Little does St. Louis know, the real monument is falling.

Last month my friend Emily Hemeyer invited me to contribute to a sprawling, wood-made installation called the Migratory Hive Project. The Migratory Hive Project was exhibited outdoors in Columbia, Missouri during the annual True/False Film Festival, and hopefully can find life space in St. Louis soon.

Migratory Hive Project. Photograph by Emily Hemeyer.

Emily assigned me the task of constructing an installation that would fit inside of a wooden box (in fact, one that we had utilized for our collaborative St. Louis Mythtory Tour in 2011). After contemplating ideas ranging from packing the box densely with parts of a soon-to-be-demolished certain former funeral home to constructing a scale model of another house inside of the box, I decided instead to curate a bit of personal pschogeography.

Landmarks

I decided to go through my archive and select photographs that I had taken of buildings in Old North St. Louis in 2005, the year that I had first really explored the area. That same year was the year that I returned from a brief residence in Chicago, and the year that I first found full-time professional employment in historic preservation (at Landmarks Association of St. Louis, a group whose name is bound to exploration of what really marks place). Exploration led to a decision to live in Old North, where I then purchased and rehabilitated a house with Claire Nowak-Boyd (who later moved to Detroit, while I moved to south city). The year 2005 is a transitory year in my life, and perhaps also for the landscape of Old North St. Louis (although only in the sense that the landscape changes every year). Several of the buildings that I photographed as a somewhat awe-inspired architectural naif would be gone within the same year; others within the next few.

Portrait of the artist as a young roof repairman. Here I am in October 2005, learning how to patch a roof.

For the installation, I selected photographs of those buildings that I photographed in 2005 that are now gone. These are landmarks now only in memory, but they retain powerful significance to me. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “landmark” as “an object or feature of a landscape or town that is easily seen and recognized from a distance, especially one that enables someone to establish their location.” These buildings were landmarks then, because they defined to me the landscape of a neighborhood with which I fell in love, and they are landmarks now of both those feelings (that newness of experience, how divine!) and of the ephemeral nature of Old North or any place. The OED may not allow for metaphysical definitions, but “recognized from a distance” surely could be a temporal signifier.

The Seven Lost Buildings

My lost buildings are not all within the physical boundary of Old North as defined by official standards, but rather within a larger space mapped by my mind that includes both the neighborhood and the area across I-70 eastward where the village of North St. Louis once largely lay. My “Old North” is both historic and mental construct, related to the “actual” boundary through personal semiotic standards.

Each building has a representational nature heightened by later experience. “Distance” includes not simply time but the evolution of my professional and psychological lenses — how I now decode buildings and place them within larger systems of production and loss. Here are the buildings as I now see them.

3248 N. 19th Street.

3248 N. 19th Street: The City Eats Itself. This was the first house in north city that I encountered where brick thieves had devoured parts of its walls. I had only heard stories before seeing this lonely house on 19th Street. The house was owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority, which had it demolished in August 2005. In the next five years brick theft would become an epidemic in and around Old North due to the increase in vacant buildings spurred by Paul J. McKee Jr.’s Northside Regeneration project.

1300-4 Hebert Street.

1300-4 Hebert Street: We Arrived Too Late. In April 2005, glorious springtime led me to Dimmitt’s Confectionary at the southwest corner of Hebert and 13th streets. The building would be gone within four weeks. Demolition was not tragic given that the building had been abandoned for decades and had collapsed into itself. The land was not even worth the cost of reconstruction. Demolition just was. No doubt the building could have been economically feasible to rehabilitate, just well before my time.

1303 Benton Street,

1303 Benton Street: Someone Cares But That Is Not Enough. I first spotted this near Federal style row house in 2004 — because how could an abandoned building marked with the phrase “Someone Cares” escape any photographer’s attention? I took a photograph in May 2005. The low ceiling heights and simple dentillated brick cornice date the building to the 1850s. Owned by an absentee owner in south city, the building held on surprisingly long after its roof started collapsing, only being demolished in 2010. When it finally collapsed, the land beneath it may well have sighed in relief.

1610 N. 14th Street.

1612 N. 14th Street: Urban Renewal’s Collateral Damage. When I first came across this block of 14th Street in March 2005, I thought that I stepped into a city I had never visited. On one side of the street, at each end, were the ancient (by American standards) masses of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home (1867) and the German Singing Society Building (1859). One the other side were two rows of houses — once common to the city but largely missing today — and a single residential building. The row in which this house was part seemed to date to the late 1850s or early 1860s, judging from the stone lintels, gabled roof forms and plain brick work. Yet I was not the first admirer of the site, and McKee’s companies already owned it. In 2010, the house and its northern neighbor were wrecked following fire. The block today struggles to retain its other-worldly character.

914 Madison Street.

914 Madison Street: Used Up. I first encountered this Romanesque Revival two-family dwelling in August 2006. Stripped of windows and sporting brick loss, the building nonetheless showed signs of not being vacant for too long. Yet it stood isolated across the interstate from official Old North, and had an absentee owner likely praying for its demise. I assume then as I did now, that as soon as major repairs were needed the owner walked away. This building fell in 2005, and most of the other remaining dwellings in the handful of blocks east of I-70 have been erased in the following years.

1219 Clinton Street.

1219 Clinton Street: Last To Stand May Mean Last to Die. By the time that I first saw the Federal style brick house with Roman-arch mousehole, it was devoid of context. This was the last house on the block, and across the street was a residential development built in the 1980s. The house was not too far gone to rehabilitate, but the question shifted from the public one of preserving historic character — the block long had lost that — to the more discrete question of whether anyone cared enough to rehab the building. I took this photograph in summer 2005. The growing crack in the front wall split open following subsequent storms, and the July 2006 wind shears destroyed it. The house was wrecked late in 2006.

902 Chambers Street.

902 Chambers Street: Whodunnit: The Interstate Highway, Population Decline or a Summer Storm? One summer day in 2005, I wandered across I-70 and photographed this corner tavern building. The flounder roof form, the Italianate traits and the basically sound body were attractive. Yet the building was severed from Old North after 1954 when I-70 construction began, and its customer base shifted to the dwindling number of workers in and around North Broadway. the main neighborhood declined, the orphaned portion declined — and the building could not resist these forces. In July 2006, the tornadic south wind that sheared my own roof off led to a massive collapse of roof structure and wall here. The building was gone within a year.

Materials to be covered include mixture and pointing for brick surfaces, cleaning and repair of brick, limestone, sandstone and terra cotta.

Date(s): March 13 & 14, 2013 (second date will be filled after first date registration filled)
Time: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Location: The Lemp Brewery Complex
3410 Lemp Avenue, Suite 22A, STLMO 63118

Credits: Three hours HSW (AIA approved credits)

Cost: $75 registration fee

RSVP: To register and learn details, download this form.