Categories
Historic Boats Historic Preservation Mississippi River Riverfront

Pinnacle Chief: S.S. Admiral Has "A Few Years Left"

by Michael R. Allen

Yesterday’s article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the fate of the S.S. Admiral (“Boat my move north” by Gail Appleson) reported on both the short-term and long-term fates of the Art Moderne vessel. Pinnacle Entertainment, owner of the boat, plans to move the Admiral to a site just north of the Chain of Rocks Bridge. This move could take place in 2009, if the Missouri Gaming Commission approves.

The more troubling news comes in a quote from Pinnacle Chief Executive Office Dan Lee. According to Lee, the Admiral is close to needing its 100-year-old-hull (the Art Moderne section was built atop an existing 1907 hull) rebuilt, and Pinnacle has no interest in making that repair. Lee told the Post that re-hulling “wouldn’t be economical” but he thinks that “there are a few more years left on that hull.” How long the S.S. Admiral can survive remains uncertain.

Categories
Demolition Hyde Park JNEM North St. Louis Riverfront

Long Lost: First Home of Bremen Bank

by Michael R. Allen

The following scanned clipping comes from the January 9, 1949 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Some readers know of the 1927 Bremen Bank building diagonally across the intersection of Broadway and Mallinckrodt streets; that lovely historic building remains the home of the Bremen Bank.

This clipping is interesting because its caption tells the story of what has happened to large buildings built for specific large tenants when the original tenant moves out. First another large user might come along, with a less prominent use of the space (her, a real estate office). Then comes a second wave of office use, and further depreciation of value. Finally, the property is eyed for a larger development. The story here ends a few months after this blurb appeared in the newspaper. After Mallinckrodt purchased the lovely old bank building, it wrecked it. While the blurb mentions federally-subsidized atomic energy activity, Mallinckrodt actually wrecked the Bremen Bank for a worker parking lot. To this day, the site remains vacant save a small building built on the east end if the parcel in 1994.

In 1949, such industrial expansion along Broadway north and south of downtown was not uncommon. Such expansion came on the heels of the 1947 city Comprehensive Plan, which streamlined land uses to industrial in formerly mixed-use areas along the riverfront while calling for a zoning plan that would allow such anti-urban uses as surface parking on a major thoroughfare. Alas, that zoning plan remains in place, while the land use plan finally changed in 2005. Also remaining is the notion that industrial sites need to spread outward, surrounded by parking and open land, and not be more integrated into city neighborhoods. A clipping like this demonstrates that there are formidable constants in historic preservation and urban design. Nearly sixty years later, a lot remains the same.

North Broadway around Bremen Bank, however, does not remain the same. Mallinckrodt’s expansion — much of it for parking — erased most of the pedestrian quality of that street scape. Besides the bank, only a few other small businesses are open there. Interstate 70 forms a barrier between this area and the populated section of the Hyde Park Park neighborhood to the west. The city government officially draws the Old North and Hyde Park boundaries at I-70, further enforcing the separation. Had things progressed differently, the old Bremen Bank could have been retained along with other buildings on Broadway, with Hyde Park connected to its major employer and to the riverfront.

What is puzzling is that at the same time the 1947 Comprehensive Plan’s call for creating an industrial wall along the river was being drafted, civic leaders were also plotting the construction of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial downtown in order to improve the central riverfront. Did no one see the conflict between the policies? There was already an organic urban connection to the river, and it could have been enhanced as the city began its loss of industry. Industrial expansion policies — and, I should point out, the Memorial itself — decimated the street grids, neighborhoods and buildings that bound the city to the Mississippi. The long-term consequences of the old policies are haunting us today. And we don’t have as many resources like the Bremen Bank building around to help reconnect us to the riverfront as we started with.

Categories
Downtown Green Space JNEM Riverfront

Clay: Arch Grounds Bill "Technical Placeholder" for Next Congress

by Michael R. Allen

Today’s Riverfront Times carries an article by Kristin Hinman, “Shaky Grounds: Congress may consider putting the Arch’s riverfront park in private hands”, in which Congressman William Clay states on the record the intention behind HR 7252, the bill that he introduced in October to cede control of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial to a private group.

Clay’s statement is encouraging:

In a written statement to Riverfront Times, he describes the bill as a “technical placeholder” for the 111th Congress, which begins in January.

“The potential loss of a portion of a national park, even for a worthy public purpose, is a very serious matter,” Clay writes. “And it will require extensive public input and community engagement before anything happens.”

The congressman is correct. I am glad that Clay put his intentions on the record and supports a public process for considering changes. Hopefully, when the next Congress convenes, Clay refrains from introducing any bill until the National Park Service draft management plan is reviewed by the public and formally adopted in the spring.

Categories
Academy Neighborhood Demolition Lafayette Square North St. Louis Preservation Board Shaw South St. Louis St. Louis Place

Preservation Board to Consider Five Demolition Proposals on Monday

by Michael R. Allen

The preliminary agenda for the St. Louis Preservation Board’s regular monthly meeting on Monday, November 24 is now available. The agenda contains five demolition proposals.

Three proposals are preliminary reviews requested by the Department of Public Safety, seeking condemnation for demolition on private properties located at 1824 Warren Street in the Clemens House-Columbia Brewery Historic District (St. Louis Place), 5115 Cates Avenue in the Mount Cabanne-Raymond Place Historic District (Academy) and 3927-29 Shenandoah Avenue in the Shaw Historic District. The fourth preliminary review is requested by a homeowner for a historic garage at 1106 Dolman Street in the Lafayette Square Historic District.

Then there is a staff denial of a demolition permit for the frame 19th century house at 4722 Tennessee Avenue in Dutchtown South. A different owner went through the same motions last year, and in June 2007 the Preservation Board upheld staff denial of the demolition permit. The current owner, New Life Evangelistic Center, is a tenacious organization, so this may be the most contentious item on the agenda.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation Housing LRA North St. Louis

Lost: 4405 & 4409 Evans Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

I have taken so many photographs of north St. Louis buildings that I often fall behind in tracking the subjects. The buildings shown above are a good example, since this photograph dates to August 2005, their demolition took place in 2006 and I noticed their loss in 2008.

When I stumbled upon this pair on Evans Avenue in Lewis Place I was struck by the versatility of the pyramidal turret. At left, the house at 4409 Evans Avenue uses the turret to punctuate the top of a projecting bay window.

The otherwise plain house stood out with the addition of that striking but basic architectural form. Next door, the flats at 4405 Evans use the turret in a different way.

Brick quoins and terra cotta panels adorned the Classical Revival building, but that center-placed turret was the crown. Rising above the flared gable’s peak, the turret drew the eye toward the sky, balancing the view of the building with a strong sense of the natural world around it. The architect’s skyward aspirations were immodest but also inspiring. Here, as in so many other instances in St. Louis, a building for the common person was addressing the street with architectural finery and any power above with a tall turret.

The vacant lot now on this site draws the eye downward, at ragged grass and the droppings of careless pedestrians and motorists. There is nothing transformational about the vacant lot, and no hint of any aspiration — even toward reuse of the site.

Categories
Downtown Green Space JNEM Riverfront

More Time Needed for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Planning

by Michael R. Allen

I was out of town Friday when KWMU aired my most recent guest commentary:

More Time Needed for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Planning

Categories
Architecture Demolition Housing LRA North St. Louis O'Fallon

Lost: Tudor Revival Apartment Building on Warne Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

The other day, I passed the southwest corner of Warne and Greelea avenues in the O’Fallon neighborhood and noticed that the apartment building once on the site was gone. The photograph above shows that building, whose address was 4225 Warne, in August 2005. The Land Reutilization Authority wrecked the building in August 2007. Vacant since 1991, the building deteriorated badly under the ownership of Jourdan and Jo Ann Jordan who finally defaulted on taxes, although the couple took out small building permits for work in 2004. Once LRA obtained the property, the roof was missing over half of the building, with massive water damage inside.

So went one of the city’s most picturesque multi-family buildings. The Tudor Revival building had a sense of whimsy, as evidenced by the irresistible small turret and the crenellation. The differentiation of setbacks also showed a smart sensibility on the part of the architect. From among a cluster of modest frame buildings arose this masonry jewel on Warne Avenue. Just west, on the opposite side of the street, is Harrison School. Just north is the commercial strip on Florissant Avenue with its southern dip down Warne. This building clearly intended to line up alongside the fancy commercial buildings and hold its own architecturally. For many years, it did.

Categories
Downtown Green Space JNEM

Needed: Public Input

by Michael R. Allen

As I sat in the Steinberg auditorium on Friday night waiting for the start of a panel discussion on the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, I wondered where the crowd might be. The panel discussion was part of this weekend’s student charrette sponsored by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Transportation Engineering Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, and featured the public match-up of Danforth Foundation President Peter Sortino and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley. Joining the panel were moderator Robert Duffy of the St. Louis Beacon, George Nicolajevich of Cannon Design and Professor Eric Mumford of Washington University. The line-up promised to be provocative.

Alas, the spirit of debate was rather tepid, although the panelists were in top form. First, the critical mass of interested citizens that I expected did not attend. Most of the audience were students participating in the charrette, university faculty and charrette speakers. Curious citizens were not present, nor was the pack of urbanist bloggers who usually pack meetings. The panel was widely advertised, too, so people did know this was going on.

At Sunday, student presentations at Mansion House, I felt the same disappointment. Where were my fellow St. Louisans? Where were even those people already disposed to caring? Where was Sortino? The press, aside from intrepid Post-Dispatch editorial writer Eddie Roth? (Tom Bradley was present.) Even I was late, scheduling something else during that time. The students put considerable intellectual energy into their projects and presentations, and generated many useful ideas. The students were, quite frankly, buzzed by the charrette. There were even smiles!

I am wondering what sort of attention the region’s citizens have paid the Arch grounds debate. With minimal attention and input, proceeding with any plan now is reckless. First, the public needs to be drawn out from whatever barriers that keep them from caring about the fate of the region’s front door. Perhaps the distance of the Arch from our citizens’ daily lives is a block to investment in discussion about design changes. The Arch grounds occupy a spot on the far east edge of the city, and terrible highway infrastructure cuts them off from even immediate urban surroundings. Maybe people don’t think of the Arch grounds as “theirs.”

Perhaps the debate has been too mired in polarization to draw interest. If the discussion is framed in terms of the Danforth proposal, the outcome may seem quite the fait accompli to most people familiar with business as usual in Mound City. The discussion needs to be recast. After all, we are talking about the future of public land. It belongs to the people, and the people ought to direct or at least inform the future of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

One thing that I think is keeping people from becoming interested: there are no visuals to back up any of the ideas about the grounds. The Arch itself is such a powerful visual symbol. Every St. Louisans knows it. Few know what the Danforth Plan looks like, or what a revamped Memorial Drive looks like or even what a lid over I-70 looks like. To most people, ideas for changing the grounds are painfully abstract. To build public excitement, visuals are needed — showing problems and solutions.

Good news: the students participating in the charrette just created a bunch of such images. Hopefully the student charrette ideas can be spread around — the proposals will be exibited starting in late November — and amplified. The Memorial is public land, and we are the owners — that is, as long as we act like we are.

TAKE A LOOK YOURSELF: Over at the Post-Dispatch‘s blog The Platform, Eddie Roth has posted his thoughts and a lovely, impressionistic video featuring sounds and sights from Sunday’s presentations. Check it out here.

Categories
Flounder House Historic Preservation Housing Hyde Park LRA North St. Louis

Floundering Frame Flounder House

by Michael R. Allen

This morning, I attended a meeting where Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr. (D-3rd) pledged to never support another demolition in Hyde Park again. Historic buildings’ value will surely increase, reasoned the alderman, “even the ones with only one wall left.” On the way back, I passed a Hyde Park house that nearly matches the alderman’s welcome remarks.

The frame house at 2911 N. Florissant Avenue is, to put it mildly, derelict. The rear half of the house has collapsed and the front has a severe lean. Owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority and vacant since 1996, the house has reached a point where demolition — either by condemnation or simple collapse — is a foregone conclusion.

That conclusion is sad, because the house itself is quite a unique specimen of that peculiar house type known as the flounder house. Historians have only found the flounder house form in St. Louis and parts of eastern Virginia. The origin of the flounder house is unknown, but the form is easy to spot: the roof slopes sharply from one side of the building to the other. The form garnered its name because the roof pitch made the house look like half of the head of a flounder fish.

In St. Louis, there are probably less than 30 flounder houses left. Most are small one-and-a-half-story homes, but a few are two-and-a-half stories tall. Benton Park, Gravois Park, Marine Villa, Soulard, Old North St. Louis, St. Louis Place and Hyde Park all have flounder houses. The noteworthy thing is that, of all of the examples that are known to survive, the house on North Florissant is the only frame flounder house. While others may exist, perhaps altered beyond recognition, none have been identified by historians at the Cultural Resources Office or Landmarks Association of St. Louis. The house in Hyde Park is quite unique.

Another interesting element to the house is that the side walls of the foundation seems to consist of two wooden sills spaced by a fachwerk wall atop a shallow rubble stone base. Fachwerk is essentially the use of covered masonry to fill in spaces between studs. Outside, a fachwerk wall looks like clapboard, timbered stucco or whatever cladding conceals it. This foundation’s original cladding and masonry are gone, with concrete block and weatherboard substituted.

Alas, being a badly-deteriorated frame building in Hyde Park does not distinguish the house. Hyde Park has many ailing frame structures that are worthy of preservation. Most are in better shape than the flounder house.

Categories
Abandonment Housing JeffVanderLou LRA North St. Louis Planning

Side by Side on Sheridan Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

Left: 2944 Sheridan Avenue, abandoned and owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. Right: 2946 Sheridan, privately owned and well maintained. Left to right: one historic building in the city’s JeffVanderLou neighborhood.