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

Mullanphy Foundation Reconstruction Underway

by Michael R. Allen


Photo from What’s New in Old North.

Old North St. Louis has made a big step in the effort to stabilize the imperiled Mullanphy Emigrant Home. The foundation of the south wall of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home is in the midst of reconstruction this week. Once the foundation work is completed, masons can begin laying the block that will form the new inner wythes of the walls; face brick will come later. Hopefully by winter’s onset the roof of the building will be supported by masonry walls.

Remember that the greater the progress made, the greater the cost. The effort to stabilize the landmark continues to seek donations.

More from What’s New in Old North: Mullanphy Foundation Begins to Rise

Categories
Infrastructure Metro East Transportation

East Side Sprawl Connector Stalled

by Michael R. Allen

Gateway Connector Lacks Funding – Nicholas J.C. Pistor (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8)

Apparently, the State of Illinois lacks funding for a $500 million east side highway that would connect Troy and Columbia. Plans aren’t dead, though — and that’s a bad thing for the character of the small towns in Illinois that it would “connect.”

Proponents of the connector call it a boon to the growing cities of the metro east. Careful scrutiny might show that the cities are losing investment and residents in their core areas while using annexation of placeless sprawl to offset the losses. The road would reward and subsidize an a trend that is slowly killing the small urban areas of the metro east.

Categories
Adaptive Reuse Architecture Downtown

Model Project

by Michael R. Allen


Photograph by the author.

At last week’s grand opening for “The Laurel” condominiums in the former Grand Leader Department Store Building on Washington Avenue, the Pyramid Companies unveiled this model of the building.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation Midtown

Emergency Demolition Order for Midtown’s Central Apartments

by Michael R. Allen

Paul Hohmann reports that the city Building Division has granted an emergency demolition order for the Central Apartments at 3727 Olive Street in Midtown.

The building is owned by Grand Center, Inc. Brick spalling has beset the western wall for the past three years, and the owner has not performed preventative maintenance despite obvious trouble. Still, the Central Apartments are structurally sound in fact and under the terms of the city’s Preservation Ordinance, which stipulates that the building must be stable enough to stand for at least another six months to be deemed stable. Clearly, there is no emergency here.

Categories
Demolition Downtown Historic Preservation Preservation Board

Denial of "Original Restaurant" Building Demolition Permit Upheld

by Michael R. Allen


Photograph by author.

At last week’s meeting of the Preservation Board, the board considered the appeal of a Cultural Resources Office Staff denial of an application for demolition of a two-story commercial building downtown located at 2217-19 Olive Street. The board unanimously upheld the denial.

The owners of the building, Gary and Gail Andrews, have owned the building since 1977 but have failed to maintain the building according to city building codes. A section of the roof of the building collapsed several years ago, causing parapet damage, but the building is stable. The owners seek to to demolish the building, replacing it with a lawn and eventually a surface parking lot to serve a building that they own at 2206 Locust Street. (Read the CRO report here.)

The building is a contributing resource to a pending national historic district, the Olive and Locust Historic Business District. The nomination is awaiting final approval from the National Park Service. According to the nomination, prepared by Melinda Winchester:

The residential character of both Olive and Locust easily gave way to commercial activity, as many people converted homes into first floor shops with apartments above. An example of this is the building at 2217 Olive. Constructed as a home for Margaret Hilton in 1888, the first floor was converted into Walter C. Persons Photo Supplies Company in 1929 by William Duerback.

Examples of such conversion on Olive and Locust east of Jefferson are nearly extinct. The nomination does not identify a single other example of the converted residence within the historic district boundaries.

Once the building is listed on the National Register as part of the district, its rehabilitation will be eligible for state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits. This building and others on the block have not been eligible for the tax credits before. With the availability of the credit, these buildings should be attractive investments.

I concur with Cultural Resources staff that replacement of a historic downtown building with a grassy lot substitutes a high land use with an inappropriately low land use.

Categories
Fire Granite City, Illinois Metro East

Driving to Granite City

by Michael R. Allen

Driving to Granite City today I passed a familiar landmark: the abandoned Fantasyland strip club, a massive metal-clad hulk whose only noteworthy architectural feature is the neon sign on its front. Since the last time I passed by, there had been a fire, with the south end of the building sporting gaping holes ringed by black-stained siding. The fire was not completely shocking, given how easy access was to the shoddy and highly-flammable interior.

Four years ago, out of curiosity, I ventured inside with a friend. This has been my only trip inside of a strip club, and I have to say I was pretty downhearted after seeing the water-damaged carpeting, peeling paneling and other dingy trappings inside. The thought of the place in full operation — lights down, stage lights on, dancers on the stage — was more upsetting than anything. What fantasy could be limited to the dull confines and hasty construction of this strip club?

Further north on Route 3, at the intersection of 4th and Broadway in Venice, the corner storefront I’ve watched for years was halfway down. Men were palletizing bricks. The storefront, with excellent vernacular Romanesque brick detailing, has long been a landmark in this town.

Meanwhile, up in Granite City, condemnation notices adorned several downtown buildings, including the ramshackle but one-proud row of flats on Niedringhaus Avenue. With myriad careless window alterations, problematic masonry repairs and general disrepair, this row has suffered much over the years. But the original beauty is still apparent, and in a state with a historic rehabilitation tax credit a building like this in a downtown like this one would be facing better prospects.

Perhaps the condemnation notices are part of Mayor Ed Hanganuaer’s continued mishandling of the historic buildings of downtown Granite City. In 2006, under the mayor’s watch, 15 buildings in the downtown area were demolished at a cost of $90,000, including many structurally sound historic buildings. For that cost, the city extinguished the much greater economic impact of historic rehabilitation.

The next time I make the trip up Route 3 to Granite City, I will face a road missing a few of the markers myself and others use to know where we are — to know what places we are passing through. Obviously, I am not sad to see Fantasyland fall; that building was nondescript and place-defying. Other buildings and structures along Route 3 are not. These are markers that beckon us to stop and learn, and that might entice some of us to invest time and money.

Categories
Historic Preservation Missouri

Pelster Housebarn Restoration Ongoing

by Michael R. Allen

Welcome to the Pelster Housebarn, an architectural marvel located in Franklin County, Missouri west of Washington. The housebarn was probably built around the Civil War by William Pelster, a German immigrant. Pelster had already built and occupied a log home nearby. Pelster’s decision to build a housebarn was unusual. Typically the housebarn, which literally combined a farm’s house and barn under one roof, was a transitional structure for recent immgrants who went on to build freestanding homes.

Housebarns were most prevalent in the Midwest and Great Plains. Only twelve remain in the United States. The Pelster housebarn features a tall gabled roof over a fachwerk structure. The fachwerk here combines a structure of pegged rough-hewn timbers filled in with fieldstone. The exterior is clad in clapboard, but some of the walls are exposed in the barn. The housebarn rests on a fieldstone foundation.

The large entrance at the Pelster Housebarn opens onto the threshing floor, reputed to have never been used for its intended purpose. Off of the threshing floor are a granary and creamery. The living quarters were located to the left of the entrance, with a separate entrance off of the porch (restored last year) but with an open staircase in the barn section leading to the second floor sleeping quarters. Livestock was kept on the lower level, accessed through entrances at each gable end. The lower level also housed a fruit cellar. Above the threshing floor was a hayloft.

In 1978, the housebarn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After ownership by the Missouri Heritage Trust (now Missouri Preservation), the Pelster Housebarn became property of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which is unable to enter the property into the state park system.

Restoration work is thus funded privately, and the Friends of the Pelster Housebarn has been chartered to raise funds for ongoing work. More information about their effort is available here.

Last year’s porch project was a substantial undertaking. More work is needed, including replacement of the non-original tin roof, which is in poor repair.

Photographs by Lynn Josse.

Categories
Historic Preservation Mayor Slay

Which Twelve?

St. Louis has sent an application for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2008 List of America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations. Read more at MayorSlay.com.

Categories
Media People

Shoo Fly Shoo

by Michael R. Allen

The Riverfront Times declared me “Best Gadfly” in this week’s “Best of St. Louis” issue (more coverage at Urban Review).  I’ll take the honor, but I’m puzzled that the writer seems to know where I buy my pants.

Categories
Demolition Fire North St. Louis The Ville

More Buildings Falling on MLK in The Ville

by Michael R. Allen

The St. Louis Preservation Board approved demolition of these cast-iron-front commercial buildings at 4220, 4222 and 4224 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive in the Ville at its meeting on Monday, September 24 (see report). The center building at 4222 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive burned and collapsed earlier this month. The flanking buildings are deteriorated but not beyond rehabilitation. In fact, they likely would contribute to a national historic district along Martin Luther King Drive in the Ville. Alas, no architectural survey and district nomination have been completed in recent years. Alderman Sam Moore (D-4th) requested the demolitions along with demolition of commercial buildings at 4149 and 4153 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive (see report). Those permits also were approved by the Board.