Categories
Demolition North St. Louis Storefront Addition

Storefront Addition: Delmar Foods

by Michael R. Allen

The bow-front, limestone house at 4171 Delmar Boulevard was once an elegant home in the Queen Anne style. Later, it became the backdrop for a one-story commercial bump-out that ended its days as Delmar Foods. Like many homes on the Delmar streetcar line, this one let traffic and density guide the way to a storefront addition during the peak years of St. Louis population boom. the house was empty by 1994, but the storefront remained occupied for another decade. Demolition of both came in 2007. The photograph above dates to November 2006.

Categories
Flounder House Housing Hyde Park North St. Louis

Small Houses on Vest Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

This house stands in Hyde Park on the west side of Vest Avenue just north of Bremen Avenue. Despite some obvious maintenance needs, the house is a treasure. This is one of the small houses that have a front-gabled salt box roof profile. I think of these houses as cousins to our city’s flounder houses, whose roofs make a slope from one side to the other. The salt box variation has a roof profile common around the country, but the basic form and size of the house is akin to the small flounder houses that one still finds all over the city east of Grand Avenue.

On the next block of Vest to the south stands another small house. This one is of a different but common type, that of the two-story mansard-roofed home in which the mansard roof forms the second floor. These houses are more common than either the flounder or the saltbox, but typically are also small in size.

Taking the wide view of this block, we see two other small houses and some vacant lots. Some two-story houses are down the block and across the street.

Looking up to the next block north, we find vacant land and the one-story salt box house. Some two-story houses are down the block and across the street.

This west end of Hyde Park developed slowly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the results are neither as consistent or as dense as the eastern part of the neighborhood. The west end was far less desirable as a place to live due to the presence of the meat packing industry, which was centered on Florissant Avenue. The Krey’s Packing plant and a few other packing-related buildings stand, but much of the rest is gone. The packing industry was largely lost to the National City Stockyards in Illinois by the early 20th century, so later residential development in western Hyde Park produced larger buildings. The early houses were modest in scale, many only one story tall. The residents worked nearby at the packing houses or the Hyde Park brewery.

The 1909 Sanborn fire insurance map shows over a dozen one-story houses on the two blocks of Vest Avenue profiled here. Less than six remain. The remaining small houses point to a residential economy lost to rising Gilded Age fortunes. Nowadays, in the wake of the McMansion glut and with the American economy on the brink of collapse, small houses do not seem so bad. Necessity led to construction of the small houses on Vest, and necessity may make them attractive 21st century housing options.

A new ballpark is proposed east of here on Florissant Avenue, and revitalization efforts around Bethlehem Lutheran Church and Irving School have changed this west end of the neighborhood into a livable place. New housing has gone up on 22nd and 25th streets, but the larger market-rate homes have limited demand. Perhaps an alternative market-rate infill project is in order on Vest Avenue. The vacant lots offer the opportunity to again build small houses there to create affordable, low-energy houses. Small houses already cost less to heat and cool, and are easier to make passive than larger homes. The size makes them more affordable, and also expandable. The first home shown above has an addition on its south side, and others shown on the Sanborn map have one or two rear additions. Such flexible, small houses are in short supply in St. Louis. Development of more needs to happen.

Categories
Architecture Historic Preservation North St. Louis

Art Deco on Natural Bridge

by Michael R. Allen

The narrow two-story commercial building located at 4712 Natural Bridge Avenue in north St. Louis sports exquisite terra cotta in the art deco style. While the smooth buff glazing is eroding, the terra cotta’s fine, curved abstract foliage and geometric patterns are intact. These form an integral part of the chamber drama of the building — pronounced piers define the four second story windows, which are topped by herringbone brickwork in the upper spandrel areas. These windows sit above a storefront that may have stretched the entire width between the building’s outer piers. Up above, the step in at each side of the parapet is a deft touch.

Of course, we don’t know much about that first floor storefront since the owners have bricked it in with a motley tapestry as well as concrete block surrounding a plain steel door. At least the filler brick in the second floor matches the buff color of the original face stock, because that first floor grabs the eye and tried to keep it from finding the beauty here. We do know that the buidling dates to 1929, and its first tenant was Peter Blumenschein’s shoe repair shop.


The blunders down the street are nearly forgiven two (long) blocks west of the old Blumenschein shop at the home of Droste Heating, Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning at 4956 Natural Bridge. Sure, the storefront openings have been changed, and two of the four upper windows have lost original steel sash for glass block, but at least the openings aren’t closed up to light completely. Of course, the big draw here is the stylized sheet metal sign, with its delightful fonts. Droste and Rockel, tinners, built the building in 1937 and have remained here ever since. Apparently the company is proud of its presence on Natural Bridge, a commercial thoroughfare that can take every bit of pep that old sign provides.

Categories
East St. Louis, Illinois Ghost Signs Metro East

1843

by Michael R. Allen

On Missouri Avenue in East St. Louis stands a forlorn billboard amid many forlorn buildings. The west face of the ancient-looking, rusty and crusty two-sided board bears the numbers “1843.” The 3 is a bit crooked, and there is only the faintest outline of explanatory clues. A name plaque at the base of the sign reads “Peter Hauptmann Company,” the defunct owner of the sign.

Some people think that the numbers are the declaration of a year, which they are, but not of any year particularly momentous in the life of the city of East St. Louis. The sign, after all is an advertisement for David Nicholson 1843 Bonded Whiskey. I am amazed that a billboard would go unused anywhere. Missouri Avenue is not a slow street, since it co-exists as Illinois State Highway 15, a major path between Belleville and St. Louis. The billboard advertisement is the lowest form of commercial activity that often co-exists peacefully with prostitution and drug dealing as the last-ditch attempt to make money in a place. Why didn’t a cell phone ad replace the old whiskey sign years ago?

Categories
Industrial Buildings Infrastructure Mississippi River North St. Louis

Joseph F. Wangler Boiler & Sheet Metal Works

by Michael R. Allen

I report with relief that the latest footprint of the proposed Mississippi River Bridge at St. Louis reduces the number of historic buildings proposed for demolition to less than six. (Alas, the footprint will cover the site of the “big mound” at Broadway and Mound streets, which is potentially one of the city’s most significant Native American archeological sites.) One of the buidlings in the path of the ramps connecting the bridge to Cass Avenue is the complex once occupied by the Joseph F. Wangler Boiler & Sheet Metal Works Company, located on the superblock (Mullanphy is closed) bounded by 10th, Howard, 9th and Cass. Much of the complex dates to mid-20th-century expansion, but at the core is a taller 19th-century brick building bearing the name of the company.

The Wangler works warranted a mention in E.D. Kargau’s 1893 Mercantile, Industrial and Professional St. Louis. Kargau noted that among St. Louis’ many industrial concerns are but a few boiler makers, Wangler being one. The Wangler works started in 1864 as Cantwell & Wangler before falling under control of Joseph F. Wangler, a Pittsburgh native. The first location was at 1019-23 Main Street, but the firm need space and moved west to the block where its name can still be read.

According to Kargau, the Wangler shops “are equipped with the most approved and modern machinery and the work turned out from them is unsurpassed in exact workmanship, durability and quality of material and are always closely examined before being sent out” (page 295). Among these renowned works were, of course, boilers as well as sheet iron work, storage tanks and tanks for ice machines.

Kargau had much praise for Wangler and his sons as business leaders, stating that they “are at all times ready to participate in every movement for the welfare and in the interest of the community” (page 296). Long gone are these men, their company and the spirit of enlightened civic business culture. We have only a few buildings from the boiler works to remind us of the Wanglers’ good work, and not for more than another decade. Some may find a new bridge to be a work in the interest of popular welfare, but the fruits of employment found at the boiler works provided more bread to the common person than the new bridge ever will.

Categories
Architecture Lindell Park North St. Louis

The Egyptian Temple in North City

by Michael R. Allen

Those who use Natural Bridge Road know that St. Louis has an Egyptian temple, adorned with obelisks, cartouche-style medallions and pagan female figures in relief. Standing out even among the showy architecture of north St. Louis — Central High School stands immediately across the street, after all — the temple at the southwest corner of Natural Bridge and Garrison avenues in Lindell Park never fails to catch the eye of those who pass by.

Now used as the Muhammad Islam Academy, the building at 3625 N. Garrison Avenue has housed many different churches, including the Martin’s Temple Church of God in Christ. However, the builder and original occupant was not a religious order but a fraternal one: the Mt. Moriah Temple Association, an order of Masons. In 1913, the Association hired Charles Brunk, a contractor and Republican politician, to build a large and exotic Mt. Moriah Temple . Whether or not Brunk himself designed the building is questionable, since he has no comparable work to his credit and a building permit record for the Mt. Moriah Temple does not exist. The temple shows a deft and creative hand, with a stylistic program that is heavily influenced by the Viennese Secessionist movement as well as works of Egyptian antiquity.


What is not questionable is that the Mt. Moriah Temple is one of the great eclectic treasures of the city. Application of Egyptian elements in American architecture grew in the early twentieth century with the rise of Art Nouveau, Secessionist and other avant-garde influences, which coincided with American archaeological interest in ancient Egypt. However, in the early nineteenth century, architects had also developed a “Egyptian Revival” style, evident in such works as William Strickland’s Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee (1848). Such overt Egyptian inspiration is rare in St. Louis.

Categories
Adaptive Reuse Historic Preservation Housing North St. Louis SLPS

Harrison School Slated for Rehabilitation

by Michael R. Allen

On December 12, the Missouri Housing Development Commission approved issuance of 4% low income housing tax credits to the Harrison School Apartments project. Developer George Kruntchev’s North Tower Group plans to rehabilitate the historic Harrison School at 4163 Green Lea Place in the Fairground neighborhood as affordable rental apartments.

Harrison School has sat vacant since its closure by the St. Louis Public Schools in 1996. In 2003, the building was finally put up for sale at the behest of a new majority on the Board of Education that sought to lower the district inventory. In 2007, after sitting nearly four years on the market, a developer purchased the school and secured listing in the National Register of Historic Places before selling the school to North Tower Group.

Benjamin Harrison School is a magnificent example of the earlier St. Louis Public School buildings. The basic plan comes from architect August H. Kirchner, who designed the original 1895 section of the building. (Coincidentally, Kruntchev’s other school project, Grant School in Tower Grove East, also involved a Kirchner school.) That one-story, four-room section was designed for expansion. After all, the city and the Fairgrounds neighborhood were growing rapidly, and until construction of Harrison the only other school in the vicinity was Ashland School, first opened in 1870. Kirchner made attempts to overcome the limitations of previous school buildings, which were dour, crowded and devoid of proper ventilation and light. Kirchner made the classrooms large with substantial windows for light and air. His ideas would influence his successor as district architect, William B. Ittner, who expanded Harrison School with additions in both 1899 (adding additional floors to the 1895 section) and 1909 (adding the north wing).

The result of the architectural evolution is an imposing Romanesque Revival school whose brick body is articulated through buff brick and red Iowa sandstone. The design is very similar to other Kirchner schools later expanded by Ittner, including Adams and Euclid schools. One of the striking features of Harrison is a kindergarten in the 1909 addition that placed two trapezoidal bay windows on either side of a hearth, an Ittner innovation that was not repeated.

Now, over twelve years since closing, the school finally is finding a new life. That’s a cautionary lesson to the Special Administrative Board (SAB) governing the St. Louis Public Schools. The SAB will be approving a facilities management plan early in the new year that will include what is anticipated as as substantial round of schools closings. Hopefully successful conversion projects like the one at Harrison will convince the board that there are many possibilities other than demolition or abandonment. I remain impressed by the wide array of adaptive reuse plans that developers have found for St. Louis schools. The again, the architecture itself, with its spaciousness and care for natural light, is hospitable to almost any human activity.

Categories
Clearance Events Historic Preservation McRee Town People South St. Louis Urbanism

Talking About McRee Town

by Michael R. Allen

Jackie Jones introduces her presentation.

Yesterday afternoon St. Louis University doctoral student Jackie Jones presented her dissertation thesis, “Picturing a Neighborhood: McRee Town in Saint Louis, Missouri,” to a crowd at the Royale, 3132 S. Kingshighway. The interesting venue for Jones’ presentation and resulting discussion offered a relaxed setting for what remains a controversial topic: the wholesale clearance of six blocks of an urban neighborhood by the Garden District Commision and resulting replacement by new housing. Jones disavowed any stance on the clearance, instead focusing on how images were used to justify the clearance in the press — and how other images contradict the story told by the Commission’s carefully-selected images.

Here’s Jones’ own description of her presentation:

In 2003, the Garden District Commission demolished more than two hundred buildings on the eastern half of the McRee Town neighborhood in Saint Louis. The Commission, a private coalition headed by officials from the nearby Missouri Botanical Garden, demolished six blocks of historic brick homes and apartment buildings that housed primarily low-income renters and homeowners, relocated hundreds of residents, erected twenty-five acres of market-rate, single-family, suburban-style housing on the cleared land, and ceremoniously renamed the area Botanical Heights. This presentation explores how visual representations of McRee Town between 1998-2003 helped legitimize this urban renewal project and the dislocations it caused in the lives of McRee Town residents. It engages viewers with the photographs of burned-out, boarded-up, weed-infested buildings that populated newspaper reports and public relations documents during these five years, and juxtaposes them with photographs taken by Genevelyn Peters, a McRee Town resident prior to the neighborhood’s destruction. These images – of family, homelife, play, and community – complicate and challenge the dominant understanding of this neighborhood and its residents as criminal and atomized by presenting images that depict a vibrant neighborhood community.

People listen to Jones’ making a point.

The people present included someone involved in the decision to clear the six blocks, residents of Botanical Heights (the new housing development), the area’s Neighborhood Stabilization Officer Luke Reven and others. While I had to leave before discussion was over, discussion touched on the damaging impact of I-44 construction in the early 1970s, the way in which similar images as those taken in McRee Town galvanized Lafayette Square and Soulard residents to pursue preservation instead of clearance, the deceptive nature of photographs and whether or not the term “suburban” applies to Botanical Heights.

Looking west down McRee Avenue from 39th Street.

On another note, if Royale proprietor Steven Fitzpatrick Smith is attempting to revive the tradition of the discussion salon, count me in!

Categories
Historic Preservation Media SLPS

Historic Preservation Should Be Part of St. Louis Public Schools Facilities Plan

by Michael R. Allen

KWMU aired my latest commentary today, on my birthday: Historic Preservation Should Be Part of St. Louis Public Schools Facilities Plan

Categories
Infrastructure St. Charles County St. Louis County Streets

St. Louis Area Makes a List for Obama Administration

by Michael R. Allen

An article in the December 26 edition of the St. Louis Business Journal reported that the City of St. Louis has created a 400-page report on its federal infrastructure funding priorities, while St. Louis County has created a 200-page document of the same. The governments will deliver these reports to the incoming presidential administration of Barack Obama in response to his promise to channel federal dollars into public works programs across the nation.

The city’s report outlines some big-ticket priorities: $900 million for the North/South MetroLink line, $219.5 million in streetscape improvements, $160 million in public school building improvements, $80 million in airport improvements and $59 million to implement the Gateway Mall Master Plan. According to Deputy Mayor Barbara Geisman, all of these projects are ready to start as soon as they are funded, but full funding is unlikely immediately. Still, the city’s placement of MetroLink expansion at the top of its list is smart, since that is a crucial component of building a strong city economy and connecting citizens to jobs. The city’s list carries some basic but crucial needs: street and transportation improvements and school renovation. (The Gateway Mall project is another story, but something does need to happen to the mall area.) These are important to stabilizing our neighborhoods, and Geisman should be commended for placing a high priority on these things.

Moving beyond the ready-to-go ideas, perhaps the city would consider a future request for an urban homesteading program. The program could find funding to stabilize and market the Land Reutiliation Authority’s thousands of vacant homes across the city, generating hundreds of construction jobs and getting tax-free property back on city tax rolls where it can generate money to fund roads and schools.

St. Louis County’s list starts with a $200 million, 3.3-mile expansion on Highway 141 at the top followed by the $105 million needed to retain existing Metro public transportation in the outer county. A significant and less costly item on the St. Louis County list is $24 million to fund a Midwest China Trade and Commercialization Center at NorthPark. While the China cargo hub prospect is not a done deal, it has the potential to bring more jobs to the St. Louis area in the next decade than any other prospect.

Other requests headed to the Obama administration are a predictable $510 million highway spending request from the Missouri Department of Transportation and a $66 million request to extend Page Avenue farther into St. Charles County, so that one may have a straight drive from downtown St. Louis to Mid Rivers Mall Drive. These requests are the usual pave-it-and-they-will-come junk.

Obviously, the disparate requests show the problem of regional political fragmentation. Inevitably, there will be partial funding of many requests rather than full funding of something big and transformational. Imagine what might happen if the regional governments pulled together with one request for the North/South MetroLink line this year, and further extensions in the future, rather than place the burden solely on the City of St. Louis. Imagine if the Missouri Department of Transportation put some of the needed Metro funding in its request.

Remember when we imagined that Obama could become president? Now that the dream is real, it’s time to imagine other changes closer to home. Or, we can all fight over the pie for the next eight years, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess where that will get the St. Louis area.