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.

Categories
Abandonment Documentation Media

Sonic Atrophy Returns

Sonic Atrophy has returned to the internet after a two year absence. The website features photographs of abandoned places along with narratives on the anonymous site creator’s experiences visiting and photographing the places. Most of the locations featured on Sonic Atrophy are in the St. Louis region, but some are located in other places including Peoria and Cairo, Illinois and Gary, Indiana.  Visit the website here.

Categories
land use landbanking LRA St. Louis Board of Aldermen

3500 North Grand: One of LRA’s Many Available Buildings

by Michael R. Allen


Photo from Land Reutilization Authority.

This three-story commercial building with a distinctive chamfered corner stands at 3500 N. Grand Boulevard (northeast corner of Grand and Hebert) in the Lindell Park neighborhood. Formerly home to a bank, this building in the Classical Revival style was built in 1909.

This is just one of the thousands of properties owned by the city’s holding agency, the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA). LRA seeks $15,000 for this building — a price below market value. A recent sales contract fell through and the building is again on the featured properties section of LRA’s website.

Last September, I published a blog entry entitled “LRA’s Problem With Marketing: It Needs to Start.” I chastised LRA for leaving properties that had sold in the featured properties list without adding new ones. One year later, I am pleased to report that LRA’s website features only available properties on this list. I am not pleased to report that the online list still represents the bulk of LRA’s marketing efforts.

While many blame LRA itself, that’s a cop out. As a municipal authority, LRA is hidebound to funding and operational binds placed on it by those with budgetary and legislative authority. Ultimately, each of us city residents is a stakeholder in LRA. LRA’s staff cannot effect major and necessary policy changes related to the disposition of city-owned buildings and land — but our elected representatives can.

Categories
Demolition Downtown Historic Preservation Hyde Park North St. Louis Preservation Board South St. Louis

UPDATED: Three Demolition Applications and One Appeal on Monday’s Preservation Board Agenda

by Michael R. Allen

UPDATED Monday, Sepetmber 24.

Three applications for demolition are on the final agenda for Monday’s meeting of the St. Louis Preservation Board. The permit applications are:

– 2868 Missouri Avenue in Benton Park (national and local historic district), owned by Craig Hamby & Brian Magill. A two-story corner commercial building, located across the street from the restaurant Yemanja Brasil, mostly collapsed last year. An adjacent building is stable, but the owner seeks to demolish it too. Application includes new construction.

– 4153 (owned by James and Betty Mitchell) and 4220-22 Martin Luther King Drive (owned by LRA) and 4224 Martin Luther King Drive (owned by Tommie Hampton) in The Ville. The buildings on Martin Luther King are brick commercial buildings. The building at 4222 Martin Luther King collapsed last month, perhaps causing damage to its neighbors.

There is one appeal of a staff denials:

– 2217-19 Olive Street downtown, owned by Gary and Gail Andrews. This is a two-story, flat-roofed brick commercial structure.

The meeting begins at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, September 24, on the twelfth floor of the office building at 1015 Locust Street.

Categories
Abandonment land use landbanking Rust Belt

The Crisis of Abandonment

by Michael R. Allen

A recent article published on Preservation Online entitled “Winging It in Buffalo” provokes thoughts about the nature of widespread urban abandonment. In the article, writer Stephanie Smith discusses the situation of Buffalo, New York, where city leaders have started a “Five by Five” program to bring its vacant building rate closer to five percent within five years by demolishing 1,000 buildings a year. City planners there estimate that 10,000 buildings should be demolished.

This campaign to “right size” the city makes sensible historic preservation planning next to impossible. The Buffalo preservation board has to consider 1,000 applications a year. There is no way that preservation board members can even begin to make sense of what comes across their desks. At the same time, city leaders at least pay lip service to the idea that massive clearance is ultimately detrimental to neighborhoods.

The larger issue here is relevant to St. Louis and other cities: widespread abandonment creates public safety and land use crises of unprecedented scale. Natural time dooms many historic buildings, while political time expedites that process. Economic time brings solutions slowly, and may not move fast enough for the comfort of residents who remain in areas where abandonment is rampant. While the federal government has spent billions of dollars on supposed crises in nations like Iraq, we have failed to direct it to play a meaningful role to resolve our urban crises. Local problems rely on local solutions — and severely limited local budgets. How and when do we break from this cycle?

Thanks to my colleague Lindsey Derrington for the link.

Categories
Downtown Infrastructure

Sidewalk Indecision at the Ninth Street Garage

A new game downtown is taking bets on how many times workers on the Ninth Street Garage will tear out and rebuild the sidewalks around the new parking garage. Today crews were seen repaving already-paved sections of the sidewalk on Locust Street along the north elevation. In recent weeks, the crews went through many changes on the Ninth Street side that involved installing a thin strip of granite since buried under a sheen of dust that renders it nearly invisible.

Needless to say, the sidewalks around the garage do not include street trees.