Categories
Downtown Preservation Board

Circuit Court: Bring Facts, Not Claims, to the Preservation Board

by Michael R. Allen

Amid a heat wave and the pop-pop of homegrown independence celebration came an easy-to-overlook but significant preservation victory: the St. Louis Circuit Court’s affirmation of the Preservation Board’s decision to block demolition of the warehouse at the Cupples Station complex known colloquially as “Cupples 7.” Upon appeal by owner Kevin McGowan’s company, the Preservation Board upheld the Cultural Resources Office denial of a demolition permit at its meeting on November 28, 2011. McGowan appealed the decision to the Planning Commission, which voted to take no action.

Cupples Station Building 7 before the barriers went up in 2011.

Under the city’s preservation ordinance, the final appeal is to the Circuit Court. McGowan followed in the footsteps of legendary developer Larry Deutsch, who in 1995 famously obtained a Circuit Court ruling overturning the predecessor Heritage and Urban Design Commission’s denial of demolition of the former Miss Hullings Building at 11th and Locust Streets. McGowan’s Ballpark Lofts III LLC joined creditor Montgomery Bank in a suit against the city in Circuit Court seeking demolition as well as inverse condemnation. On Friday last week, McGowan lost on both counts.

The Circuit Court ruling affirms all of the Cultural Resources Office and Preservation Board findings, yet it concedes that the point of Cupple 7’s soundness under the definition of the preservation ordinance “presents the Court with its most difficult assessment of the evidence.” Yet the Court disagrees with the conclusions submitted by McGowan’s structural engineer. Most importantly, the Court ruling finds that McGowan failed to explore temporary structural stabilization of the building — a point that preservationists brought up at the Preservation Board meeting.

Perhaps the most significant part of the ruling is its dismissal of claims made by McGowan attorney Jerry Altman that structural stabilization of Cupples 7 would cost $7-8 million and full rehabilitation would cost about $52 million. The Court’s response is summed up as “prove it” — the Court finds that McGowan submitted no independent analysis to prove these figures had any basis. Likewise, the Court dismissed Altman’s assertions about the loss should McGowan’s company sell the building for less than its mortgage of $1.4 million. Again, no evidence.

The Circuit Court ruling on Cupples 7 affirms the strength of the city’s preservation ordinance, and the need for Preservation Board decisions to be considered on the basis of fact. On the surface, this seems to be a very simple ruling. Yet its timing makes it very important. Besides McGowan, recent demolition seekers at Preservation Board meetings, like the AAA, have brought forth claims about architectural merit and reuse potential that lack legal, financial or professional base. The Cupples 7 ruling reminds everyone that those arguments don’t hold any legal weight, and that the Preservation Board should continue to stick to the facts.

Categories
Demolition North St. Louis Schools SLPS South St. Louis

Hodgen School Under Demolition

by Michael R. Allen

Historic View of Hodgen School. Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1884.

The Hodgen School rose from the good soil of St. Louis in stages starting in 1884. Then, 128 years later, the St. Louis Public Schools destroyed it. The Hodgen School displayed no signs of stress, decay or lack of reuse potential. Its limestone foundation and brick walls were sturdy, and its ornamental details — carved limestone blocks, rounded bows, sheet metal cornices — all were proof of the prowess of St. Louis craftsmen during the Gilded Age.

Do the blows dealt by the demolition team’s sledge hammers match the precise gestures by stonemasons long ago? Of course not. Yet they exemplify the change in attitude from the era in which St. Louis’ aspirations were palpable in the designs of architects like Otto Wilhelmi, who designed Hodgen’s main section. Today, as Hodgen School falls to create playground space serving an underwhelming replacement building, we can see this city’s casual disregard for its own future. The St. Louis Public Schools’ choice to use funds raised by the sales tax for building renovations is a travesty.

The underutilized park wast of the new Hodgen could have accommodated a playground. The old Hodgen building was deemed eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places by the State Historic Preservation Office last year, based on an eligibility assessment prepared by Lindsey Derrington of Preservation Research Office. National Register listing would have allowed historic rehabilitation tax credits to be used for reuse. The building’s views of the Gateway Arch and near south side location made it a likely — if not immediate — candidate for reuse. Sustainability — embodied by reusing second-nature resources that include whole buildings — ought to be a value that the St. Louis Public Schools teaches its students.

The Special Administrative Board raised $150 million for building improvements through Proposition S in August 2010. Voters did not know that any of this money would be used to demolish a historic, National Register-eligible building — a use that does nothing to help education in a struggling school district. The district instead could have raised money by selling Hodgen School, which taxpayers had already renovated at a cost over a half million dollars around 1990. The Special Administrative Board not only wasted money today, they wasted money spent 22 years ago. Yet St. Louis is not alone, which is why statewide advocacy group Missouri Preservation categorically placed School Buildings of Missouri on this year’s statewide Most Endangered Places List. That listing and the Hodgen demolition should make St. Louisans mindful of what built record of our values we are giving to the next generations.

Categories
PRO Projects

PRO’s New Office

Today there’s an office in Preservation Research Office. Ahead of our third anniversary this August, we moved out of Michael Allen’s apartment and into our first professional office.

Our new space is at Nebula Coworking, 3407 S. Jefferson Avenue at Cherokee. PRO thanks Nebula owner Jason Deem, who made the move possible, and to Carrie Iggulden at Nebula. We’re excited to be part of a vibrant co-working community as well as exciting changes up and down Cherokee Street.

Thanks go to Research Assistant Tia Shepard, Intern Alyssa Stein and Kara Clark Holland (who just designed our new logo!) for helping with the move. Also thanks to our neighbor Sam Coffey at First Punch Film Production, whose timely use of the phrase “freight elevator” made yesterday a lot less stressful than it might have been. Brain Drain Collective also helped out, one heavy box of St. Louis history books at a time.

Come visit us! The office is open.

Our new mailing address:

Preservation Research Office
3407 S. Jefferson Avenue #211
St. Louis, MO 63118

Our phone number remains 314-920-5680.

Categories
Central West End Mid-Century Modern

The Auto Club of Missouri’s Proud New Building

by Michael R. Allen

After the Auto Club of Missouri’s adopted headquarters in the former Columbian Club at 3917 Lindell Boulevard burned in 1975, the organization sought to construct a new headquarters. The leadership decided to relocate the headquarters to a site on Mason Road at Highway 40 in west St. Louis County. However, the Auto Club — an affiliate of the AAA — decided to retain its long-time Central West End site for a new member services office and automobile diagnostic center.

The April 1976 issue of Midwest Motorist published a photograph of a model of the new building on Lindell.

The April 1976 issue of Midwest Motorist reported that the club had hired Sarmiento Architects, led by designer W.A. Sarmiento, to design a new 7,500 square-foot office building as well as an 18,000 square foot diagnostic center in an existing garage to the west (built in 1967). Construction was estimated to cost $500,000. According to H. Sam Priest, president of the Auto Club of Missouri, the facility was to be “the largest and most complete of its kind in the territory.” The club served Missouri, southern Illinois and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.

The article in Midwest Motorist included bullish quotes on the new facility from Mayor John Poelker, St. Louis University Chancellor the Rev. Paul Reinert and Washington University Chancellor William C. Danforth. All three welcomed a new facility in what was seen as a key area linking the university campuses and downtown St. Louis. Indeed, Lindell Boulevard was a major thoroughfare that was actively rebuilt between 1939 and 1977. At least 34 new buildings were built there between Grand and Kingshighway in that period, in addition to several major re-cladding projects. Most of the new and redesigned buildings were in Modern Movement styles. (Take a self-guided tour of mid-century modern architecture on Lindell here.)

The Chancery of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

W.A. (Wenceslao or “Wence”) Sarmiento had already left his mark on Lindell Boulevard. The Peruvian-born designer had served as chief architect for the Bank Building and Equipment Corporation from 1952 through 1964. In that capacity, Sarmiento designed the Chancery of the Archdiocese of St. Louis at 4445 Lindell Boulevard (1963). That distinctive building made use of steel, plate glass and thin-shell concrete to articulate a circular form. That form allowed for placement of a two-story open rotunda around which offices were arranged. The exterior challenged the tenets of the International Style by encasing the steel columns in shaped cladding, applying geometric metal grilles over the glazing and placing the space-age structure on a podium of ashlar-bonded rusticated limestone. Yet the building retains a classical austerity.

AAA Building, photographed by Michaela Burwell-Taylor.

For the Auto Club of Missouri’s new building, Sarmiento again explored the application of classical formal principles to a rounded building form that symbolically adopted the shape of the national AAA logo. The one-story building was elliptical in shape, and placed at an angle on the site so that the main entrance faced Lindell Boulevard on a southwest diagonal axis. The northwest face of the building was largely unarticulated, save a drive-through window, but the main face was drawn out as a temple front with a colonnade of columns supporting an entablature and projecting cornice. Of course, the columns were of no pure order, but geometrically derived tapered concrete members. Likewise, the entablature and cornice elements were squared off, abstract concrete elements. Behind the colonnade, the wall was glazed with mirrored glass that rose the full height of the wall plane. All of these elements concealed the raw expression of building form, giving it stylistic characteristics common to the New Formalism of the 1970s.

Sarmiento’s detailing did not stop at the building entrance. Inside of the Auto Club’s building, the form of the building revealed its logic. The elliptical form allowed for a large main lobby with seating ringed by a curved bank of stations for various Auto Club agents. The design evoked Sarmiento’s acumen at bank design, but also was purely functional for the building’s purpose. Inside, Sarmiento chose to have each column rise into a lighted ceiling vault. Descending from each vault were thin mental bands that joined to clad each column. Again, the architect avoided the purely functional expression for ornamental flourish. (One ornamental landscape element that was never built was a series of metal fences of interlocked circles on the lawn.)

AAA Building interior, photographed by Jeff Brambila. In the background can be seen the 55-foot-long mural by William R. Kohn depicting automobile history in Missouri, painted after he won a 1978 competition.

The Auto Club of Missouri’s building is now known as the AAA Building and retains its original function. The Department of Motor Vehicles’ station inside of the lobby draws many people into this iconic modernist building. Yet the AAA of Missouri, successor to the Auto Club, wants to sell the building to a CVS affiliate company that would demolish it for a new chain drug store. Not only would demolition destroy a significant work of architecture, it would diminish the long historic association of the AAA with the site. How either of those things honors the history of the Auto Club of Missouri and the AAA is beyond the grasp of this writer.

The Preservation Board will consider demolition of the AAA Building as a preliminary review on Monday, June 25 at 4:00 p.m. (Meeting agenda here.) The meeting takes place at 1520 Market Street, in room 2000 on the second floor. Public testimony is welcome, either at the meeting or by e-mail to Board Secretary Adona Buford at BufordA@stlouiscity.com.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Public Policy

Northside Regeneration’s New Scale

by Michael R. Allen

Today the Missouri Court of Appeals filed its ruling in Northside Regeneration and the City of St. Louis’ appeal of Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker’s July 2010 ruling that suspended the redevelopment ordinances for Northside Regeneration’s redevelopment project. Rather than affirm the lower court’s ruling, the Court of Appeals stated that it would affirm the ruling but is instead sending it to the Missouri Supreme Court due to “due to the general interest or importance of questions involved.”

One of those fundamental questions is whether Missouri’s statues on tax increment financing (TIF) permit a municipal government to designate a tax increment financing plan for an area for which a developer has not provided specific redevelopment goals. Northside Regeneration has claimed that a redevelopment agreement for a small part of the larger 1,500 acre project satisfies Dierker’s identification of defects in the TIF and redevelopment ordinances. The Court of Appeals disagrees.

Notably, no citizens have challenged that separate redevelopment ordinance for several discrete projects within a smaller area. Should the developer want to pursue separate ordinances for smaller projects across the rest of the larger area it seeks to redevelop, there is not likely to be serious opposition. In the two years since Dierker’s ruling, Northside Regeneration has been able to acquire city-owned land in its project area, complete the rehabilitation of a warehouse on Delmar Boulevard and continue to pursue development goals. Northside Regneration’s ambitions remain large, but its operational scale has adjusted. The new scale is far less threatening to the urban fabric of the north side than it was during the acquisition phase, when entire blocks of buildings and people disappeared regularly.

The only facet of the project that has been obstructed is access to the $398 million TIF that the Board of Aldermen authorized in 2009. Dierker’s ruling does not preclude the passage of smaller TIF ordinances within the project. By the time the Missouri Supreme Court hears Northside Regeneration’s appeal, the developer may even have completed more projects in the area. What critics stated early on — that the project would have its greatest success block by block, project by project — will have become a deep reality for Northside Regeneration. Even the developer’s own approach, which has been lacking in the early fanfare and focused on obtainable work, reflects that. The 2009 ordinances are effectively dead at this point, and everyone knows it.

Categories
Demolition Lewis Place North St. Louis

Depletion, Newstead and Evans

by Michael R. Allen

Photograph from Geo St. Louis showing the corner building at 4401 Evans Avenue (right).

“Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe should yawn at alteration.”
– Othello, Act 5, Scene 2

Yesterday, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival ended this year’s run of Othello, and the quote included here reminded me of where I had been on Saturday. On Saturday, I spent some time with a journalist examining the sites of north city buildings that were sound and saveable but whose ends were near or already passed. While the ongoing depletion of north city’s neighborhoods is not the sudden and intense calamity that fell upon Cyprus in the play, it certainly represents a tragic eclipse occurring slowly and deliberately.

The globe of the city seems to yawn in response indeed, even though the results of building loss render some corners more rural than the Bootheel. At the northwest corner of Evans and Newstead avenues, we came upon the unearthed foundation of a corner storefront freshly demolished. Seven years ago, I walked this block of Evans to be greeted by a medley of brick buildings richly detailed with abundant ornamental brick, terra cotta, stamped metal and carved wood.

The site of 4401 Evans Avenue as it appeared over the weekend.

Now, the view from the corner makes the eye aim a half-block to hit a building wall. What the eye catches there is a vacant building, whose own life seems at a close. To the north, there is meadow and tree line for two blocks. Upon the soil no longer is rendered city, but some decomposed self. Like Othello, we have been blinded to the truth of our condition. Yet no schemer’s machinations lead us astray — just the neglect of inadequate policy.

Categories
Schools SLPS South St. Louis Tower Grove South

Investing in Mann School

by Michael R. Allen

Throughout 2009, the preservation community was startled by the February announcement by St. Louis Public Schools Superintendent Kelvin Adams that 17 schools were closing. Among the superintendent’s recommendations was the consolidation of Mann School (located at 4047 Juniata Avenue) in Tower Grove South with Sherman School in Shaw at the site of Mann School, which would be demolished for a new building.

Thankfully, that plan did not come to pass. Mann School survived the 2010 round of closings and Adams never again mentioned demolition or closure of the building, built in 1901 and 1916 according to designs by nationally-renowned master architect William B. Ittner.

Although Mann survived closure, the future of the building was not certain. That has changed. In May, the Special Administrative Board of the St. Louis Public Schools allotted contracts for restroom renovations and tuckpointing at the building. The investment in the building is good news to Tower Grove South, where Mann School is an important neighborhood anchor.

One of the reasons for Adams’ 2009 recommendation was the performance of students at this elementary school. Concerned neighbors formed the Alliance to Preserve Mann School, and parents and teachers worked on school performance. The closure proposal was a sobering reminder that architectural pedigree alone does not keep schools open. Public buildings are expressions of public culture. Mann’s construction reflected the ideals of the early 20th century, and its maintenance today reflects continued neighborhood investment in the school’s future.

Categories
Local Historic District Preservation Board Soulard South St. Louis

Soulard Solar Collectors

by Michael R. Allen

Looking northeast on Russell Avenue from Menard Street. The Bastille building is at center.

On May 21, the Preservation Board denied an application for solar collector installation from Robert Hiscox, owner of the Bastille bar at 1027 Russell in Soulard. Hiscox proposed installing black collector panels on the south-facing rear sloped roof of his building, shown at the center of the photograph above. Soulard is a local historic district governed by design standards last updated by ordinance in 1991.

The Soulard local historic district standards are not explicit about solar panels, which means that their installation requires a variance. The standards mandate that the character of sloped roofs be maintained through adherence to one of several times of approved roofing (most of which were not in use before 1900, I might point out). In a few instances, the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) has recommended that the Preservation Board grant a variance, and the Board has done just that. This time, however, CRO recommended denial of a variance based on the public visibility of the Bastille’s street-facing rear roof.

In her report to the Preservation Board, CRO Director Betsy Bradley wrote that “Russell Avenue is one of the wider streets in the district and links the historic district with interstate highway access and neighborhoods to the west, and therefore a street important in the perception of the historic character of the Soulard district.” Certainly, the Bastille’s roof is very visible and panels would change the visual character of the block. The Preservation Board made the right decision based on the current standards, which need to be rewritten to provide clear rules about solar collectors.

In an article by David Hunn in last week’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, there is discussion of the need to revise the Soulard standards and other local district standards to create definite guidelines for the use of energy efficient technologies like solar collectors. Should new standards permit solar collectors to be installed on street-facing roofs? Perhaps. Standing-seam galvanized roofing was once a roofing material widely used on gable roofs in Soulard. A manufacturers’ challenge is to make solar panels that could mimic such a material, which could then be incorporated in revised standards.

Yet another consideration came from my colleague Mike Jackson at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, who e-mailed me after the story came out. Mike made the point that solar panels’ efficiency are generally only 10%, making them far less “green” than they seem. Purchasing power from regional off-site sustainable sources like wind farms, while undertaking efficiency measures on building envelopes, actually is more efficient for historic building owners than a few solar panels. Solar panels will become more efficient, but they may not be the greenest way to enhance historic buildings. Thus we should be careful when revising local district standards based on current technology.

Categories
Parks South St. Louis Southwest Garden Streets

Kingshighway Needs a Crosswalk at Tower Grove Park

by Michael R. Allen

In 1902, St. Louis Mayor Rolla Wells appointed a commission to make recommendations for establishing a circumferential boulevard. The commission, led by landscape architect George Kessler, delivered a report calling for a wide and well-landscaped road connecting Carondelet, Tower Grove, Forest and O’Fallon parks, the major north side cemeteries and the north and south riverfront areas. Wells signed an ordinance in 1907 enacting the plan, but its realization was never full. Parts of the Kingshighway system exist, such as the southeast extension along Christy and Holly Hills boulevards as well as the northern memorial parkway from Martin Luther King Drive to Penrose Park.

Yet where Kingshighway was partially or never realized, the road is noisy, sometimes ugly and difficult to traverse on foot. Alas, that is the case at Tower Grove Park. There are traffic signals at Magnolia and Arsenal streets, but no intervening signal or stop sign for the rest of the western length of the park. Residents of Southwest Garden to the west have a tough time walking into Tower Grove Park.

Continue reading “Kingshighway Needs a Crosswalk at Tower Grove Park”
Categories
Chouteaus Landing Fire Industrial Buildings

Crunden-Martin After the Fire

by Michaela Burwell-Taylor

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps…every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.” – Italo Calvino

Photograph by Michaela Burwell-Taylor

Chouteau’s Landing, a quiet industrial district south of downtown St. Louis, seems to have been frozen in time. Known to many St. Louisans as a place to park before attending a Cardinals game, this area currently contains a handful of existing businesses. This urban landscape is defined by a once thriving river industry that was the center of the St. Louis economy. A landscape of elevated railways that weave their way through the old industrial complexes and the towering concrete interstate columns, which have detached this area from the rest of the city. The original function of these buildings has long since passed, yet something remains. Something special lingers in Chouteau’s Landing and the seven historic buildings that comprise the former Crunden-Martin Manufacturing Company complex are a large part of that something.

Photograph by Michaela Burwell-Taylor
Photograph by Michaela Burwell-Taylor
Continue reading “Crunden-Martin After the Fire”