Preservation Research Officeby Michael R. Allen
Dressed up for Memorial Day and viewed through the infrastructure of an electrical transformer station, the hotel tower at Lumiere Place serves its purpose well: to draw as much attention toward itself as possible, away from everything else. Even that shiny arch thing just south. Can that arch do this? Can the American flag glow? Come, moths, and bake in ecstasy!
by Michael R. Allen
A KMOX radio story that aired yesterday, “Developer Paul McKee — Target of City Hall Protest”, dropped a pretty big bomb: developer Paul J. McKee, Jr. met with some residents of his north city project area last year and refused to assure them that their homes could remain.
Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing CELEBRATION!
Saturday May 24th 12-5pm
Missouri’s First Nationally Recognized Underground Railroad Site, by the Riverfront Trail on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Gospel Music, Art Exhibit, Food Vendors, Historical Exhibits, OtherCultural Acts
“A Tale of an Urban Slave Escape,” a fully-costumed 1855 reenactment at 3pm.
Directions: Take I-70 to Grand Ave, go East toward the Mississippi River to HallSt., continue 1/4 mile to Prairie St., look for a large RiverfrontTrail sign, turn right on Prairie St. to parking area.
This event is organized by the Grace Hill Settlement House. For more information, contact Doug Eller 314-584-6703.
by Michael R. Allen
Yesterday Missouri Preservation unveiled its 2008 Most Endangered Historic Places list (follow link for full list with information). President Jeff Brambila, pictured above, announced that the Mullanphy Emigrant Home in St. Louis was being held over from last year due to continued financial needs of the stabilization project. A new foundation and new block inside walls for the south and east sides of the building are complete, but the block work on the north wall, a new roof and brick exterior facing all remain to be started. The Mullanphy is not safe yet.
Also on this year’s list due to financial needs of repair is Fairfax, where the list was announced. Located on Manchester Road in Rock Hill, Fairfax is a minimally-detailed Greek Revival home built by James Collier Marshall in 1841. Out of tune with its auto-centric surroundings, the home was already moved twice to escape demolition. The owner is the City of Rock Hill, which lacks funds to repair the building. Those in attendance at the press conference saw the high level of disrepair on the interior, where holes abound in the plaster walls and ceilings and the original wooden floors are covered with decaying vinyl flooring.
A third St. Louis are building on this year’s list is the DeVille Motor Hotel at 4483 Lindell Boulevard in the city’s Central West End. The modernist motor lodge is an elegant relic of urban renewal era, showing a sensitivity to site and neighborhood context rare for its period. Seems to this writer that the stark modernism of the DeVille shares at least a stylistic tendency with the much-earlier Greek Revival lines of Fairfax. Currently, the St. Louis Archdiocese continues to plan demolition of the hotel for a surface parking lot.
Missouri Preservation went beyond the endangered list and also announced a “watch list” of buildings from previous year’s lists still facing an uncertain future.
by Michael R. Allen
According to an article in Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, McEagle Properties indicates that the chapel at the James Clemens House is safe from imminent destruction:
Dan Brungard, a spokesman for McEagle, a development company from O’Fallon, Mo., said a St. Louis inspector said the damage was weather-related. Brungard said that the property is under contract and that the damage would likely not affect that contract.
“We will do whatever repairs are necessary,” he vowed.
Again, McEagle mentions a sales contract. Who is the mystery party?
Speaking of McEagle getting serious about maintenance, Kathleen McLaughlin’s article from last week’s Riverfront Times, “Mow Your Lawn, Mister?”, reveals that a federally-funded job program will be used for grass cutting at the “Blairmont” properties this summer.
by Michael R. Allen
Although we are all exhausted as Historic Preservation Week winds down, let’s set sights on an important event next weekend.
Next Saturday, May 24 at 7:00 p.m. at Shaw’s Gallery (4065 Shaw at Thurman) is the Get on the Grid! benefit show for the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation. A $7 cover change and cash bar will go straight to helping the Foundation raise the money it needs to connect its facility to the electric grid.
The back story: The Foundation is the organization set up by Larry Giles to administer, conserve and interpret his collections of over 300,000 architectural artifacts and 100,000 books, trade journals, photographs and drawings. In 2005, the Foundation purchased a 12.5-acre, 14-building former steel foundry in Sauget, Illinois near downtown (the old home of Sterling Steel Casting) where the collections are being consolidated. Meantime, Larry was able to make his library available to researchers by appointment in a rented space in St. Louis.
As work at the foundry progressed, financial needs dictated moving the unique library to Sauget. Trouble is, the money for completing the library space was not in place and the library is now again in storage. The first need is completing the electrical service at the foundry so that lighting and climate controls are possible. Hence, the need for the show.
Yes, there are many worthy causes but none with an appeal so direct and compelling as this. Get on the grid. Pay at the door and the Foundation might hook up the power. With power, researchers can again access one of the nation’s most important collections of literature and documents related to architectural materials. Good research will lead to information we need to restore historic buildings, interpret and defend those we have and inspire people to care about our built heritage.
Your seven dollars will go a long way, but the starting point is clear.
Those who can’t attend can send donations to:
St. Louis Building Arts Foundation
2412 Menard Street
St. Louis, MO 63104
In a move unsurprising to long-time observers, a section of the roof and the eastern wall of the chapel wing at the James Clemens House collapsed in heavy rains yesterday. The collapse took down a section of roof that was sagging severely in recent months and three bays of the east wall above the first floor. The section that collapsed ran between two interior partitions that prevented further roof damage by supporting additional weight and tying the side walls together.
The roof had demonstrated severe local failure, and the western wall had substantially bowed outward in just the least year under pressure from the failing roof trusses. Recent observation showed imminent failure.
However, the chapel shows few signs of further immediate danger. The Building Division may swoop in soon to demolish the chapel, but that would be hasty. Here’s why:
Built in 1896, the chapel was designed by Carondelet resident Aloysius Gillick, architect of several other Archdiocese buildings including the 1889 St. Mary’s Infirmary. The Sisters of St. Joseph built the chapel after taking ownership of the Clemens House earlier, in 1888. The front-gabled brick building features red sandstone ornament and sills, an ornate front porch and a high body visible from long distances to the east and north. The chapel itself is located on the second floor, and featured a suspended vaulted ceiling (mostly collapsed). The ornate marble altar and stained glass windows are both nearly completely missing.
Still, preservation of the chapel is important in retaining the historic integrity of the complex. The current configuration reflects the House’s years of religious service rather than its original mansion life, and any restoration should retain the evolved form to show the layers of historic presence.
Now is the time for the owner of the Clemens House, Paul McKee, to come forward and announce his intention. Inaction will mean certain loss of the chapel and further deterioration of the Clemens House buildings. Immediate stabilization should commence. If McKee is unwilling to do that, he should say so and offer others a chance.
Television stations KSDK and KTVI (oddly speculating that the chapel was a cathedral) covered the collapse.
by Michael R. Allen
Blairmont Associates celebrated Historic Preservation Week with the belated action of securing the James Clemens, Jr. House at 1849 Cass Avenue in St. Louis Place. According yo a KMOX radio news report, Blairmont parent company McEagle Properties claims that the Clemens House is under contract to another owner and the work is being done as part of the sale.
The house has sat unsecured for the better part of the last year, with even the front door wide open and unboarded in recent months. Many parts of the building have disappeared in recent years, and during the recent unsecured period millwork began to leave the house.
On Wednesday, May 14, Blairmont had a crew at the site, cutting and affixing fresh plywood for the numerous unboarded windows and doors as well as bricking in a hole in the rear wall of the dormitory wing. (The masonry repair used an incorrect mortar mix for the historic masonry.)
Other work included building a chain link fence across the open front entrance in the brick wall along Cass Avenue, where an iron gate once hung.
The workers did not remove the numerous trees growing out of the original house’s upper floors, not did they take any action to remove collapsed brickwork from the roof and attic of the house. Bricks falling from the taller dormitory have caused significant damage to the house’s northwest corner, collapsing roof joists and causing the third floor to sag. The chapel wing’s condition is severe, with the west wall bowing outward due to ongoing roof collapse.
Meanwhile, the cast iron portico on the house continues to lean away from the house, causing the limestone porch walls to shift with it. The painted sandstone entrance surround and porch on the chapel is eroding badly.
During the work, the city’s Building Division came and issued a stop work order. Oddly, Blairmont did not have a building permit for any of the work. While the law is the law, it’s hard to want to stop any step Blairmont is actually taking to secure one of the city’s most important and most endangered landmarks.
by Michael R. Allen
Community Baptist Church has posted a CraigsList ad for the building at 4477 Olive Street, subject of discussion at last month’s Preservation Board meeting where the board considered demolition on preliminary review. The neighboring Youth Technology Education Center (YTEC) is seeking demolition for expansion of its facility, but does not own the building. The board voted to defer the matter for two months to allow the Central West End Association, YTEC and the church to explore alternative plans including preservation of the former laundry building.
The ad states that the asking price is $250,000.
The Rehabbers Club brings you an exciting Saturday:
Saturday, May 17
9:30 a.m.
Start at 900 Utah Street
This month’s meeting focuses on south Soulard and eastern Benton Park/Marine Villa, historically part of the same development pattern but separated by the construction
of I-55.
Meet at 9:30 a.m. at 900 Utah (at S. 9th Street, south of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery). We will visit Ray and Maureen Kenski and hear about their long road to opening up a B&B in this gut-rehabbed former multi-family building. It’s one of several buildings in the area recently rehabbed by local developer Kraig Schnitzmeier. His project across the street at 3306 S. 9th just won one of Landmarks Association’s Eleven Most Enhanced Awards, and we’ll have the opportunity to hear Kraig talk about the transformation of this derelict property into a
stunning home.
3306 S. 9th Street. Photo courtesy of Kraig Schnitzmeier.
Our next stop will be a special Preservation Week visit to the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion (open to us at no charge). DeMenil board member Bill Hart will tell the story of the dramatic rescue and restoration of the mansion 40 years ago and give a special tour highlighting its ongoing rehabilitation challenges. We’ll also have the opportunity to view rarely seen photographs of the blocks to the east, demolished for I-55, which demonstrate the continuity of the urban grid before the neighborhood were severed by highway construction.
Our final stop on the tour will be “The Simon Complex”, as it is sometimes called, on the 1900 block of Cherokee Street. Ray Simon’s project started in the late 1980s and continues today, in the process creating a shaded, secluded courtyard shared by businesses and residents of the antebellum front buildings and the 1890s alley house. This type of semi-private space was once common in the City, but prohibitions against alley dwellings reduced their number considerably. The mix of commercial and residential uses, private and shared space is uniquely urban and
completely magical. Don’t miss it.
The final stop is also (by no coincidence) the site of the Rehabbers Club Used Book Sale, which benefits the Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion. This year we have a strong collection of books including rehabbing, architecture, local interest, gardening, decorating, and tons of fiction. There are also many really nice supplies (mostly of the handled flex-file variety) for your home office. If you can’t make the tour, stop by the sale at 1912 Cherokee from 10-4 Saturday or 12-4 Sunday.