Categories
Historic Preservation

Landmarks Association’s 2007 Eleven Most Endangered Buildings List

The Landmarks Association of St. Louis has announced its 2007 Eleven Most Endangered Buildings List. Selected by a committee, the list highlights buildings in the city of St. Louis in desperate need of intervention. While not conclusive, the list is a bellwether of current preservation battles — and can be sadly accurate at predicting those buildings that are lost.

This year’s list retains several buildings from last year’s list:

– Mullanphy Emigrant Home (1609 N.14th Street)
– Mullanphy Tenement (2118 Mullanphy Street)
– Givens Row (2903-7 Delmar Boulevard)
– Bethlehem Lutheran Church (2153 Salisbury)
– James Clemens House (1849 Cass Avenue)
– Carr School (1421 Carr Street)
– Wellston Station (6111 Martin Luther King Drive)

Additions to this year’s list are:

– Bohemian Hill Houses (Between Tucker and 13th Street south of Lafayette Avenue)
– Einstmann House (2347 Virginia Avenue)
– Crittenden Livery Stable (3401 Locust Street)

Categories
Brick Theft Media North St. Louis

NPR Covers St. Louis Brick Rustling

by Michael R. Allen

KWMU’s Matt Sepic is back with another built environment story, this time for NPR’s national “Marketplace” program. “Brick rustling on the rise in St. Louis” provides an overview of the problem plaguing parts of the city where there is more masonry than money — but brick yards offer a tempting conversion rate. The story features interviews with salvage specialist Larry Giles, brick dealer Bud Boldt and myself.

Categories
Infrastructure South St. Louis

Chippewa and Kingshighway Getting Slammed

The intersection of Chippewa and Kingshighway — recently the subject of a streetscape program — received some coverage from the blogs last week:

Not Pretty (Brick City, June 6)

When I Awakened, I was Mistaken… (A Six Pack of Zima and a Van, June 6)

Categories
People

A Memorial For Marti Frumhoff

From Christopher Thiemet:

Friday, June 15th, there will be a gathering in Forest Park, to honor, memorialize, and celebrate the life and times of our dear
friend Marti.

Rain or Shine!

We will be creating the space as we come together… some of us may want to share a story, read a poem, put up art work, lead us in a song, play Frisbee or Scrabble.

We see this as a informal time, family friendly, this includes dogs and children.

If this is at a time in which you will not be able to join us and you wish to have something read please email: mel@changingtide.org and we will make sure that someone reads it for you.

The space is available from 3pm – 8pm. The focused phase of this gathering will begin at 5:30pm.

This memorial is a time of celebration in a park Marti cherished.

Come early, stay late. Two BBQ pits are available.

Please Forward!

Details:
A memorial gathering to honor Marti

Place:
Pavilion 5 – Wells Drive – Across from the Zoo (south side – map here)

Date:
Friday, June 15th

Time:
3pm -8pm

Categories
Historic Preservation Pruitt Igoe

The Right Moment?

by Michael R. Allen

Sometimes I wish that I had been around in the 1950s to found a historic rehabilitation business. Or better yet, doing the same in the 1930s. Still better would to have been a United States Senator in 1934 when Congress passed the bill that established the Federal Housing Administration. (According to an article by Sam Smith, “91% of the homes insured by the agency in metropolitan St. Louis between 1935 and 1939 were in the suburbs.”)

Perhaps being a St. Louis alderman at the start of the clearance of the DeSoto-Carr neighborhood for Pruitt-Igoe would have made a big difference. There definitely were better times to intervene on behalf of preserving north St. Louis. But what demographic narratives were playing out? Those of decline. These were narratives built on the struggle of every great American city to stay alive, to survive the onslaught of the automobile so forcefully enshrined in the Interstate Highway Program (oh, to have been in Congress to vote against that!) and countless deadly urban renewal projects. What truly could have made a difference was national resistance to the destruction of cities.

Sadly, that came later when countless intellectuals, designers, politicians and others arose to find the overwhelming evidence of the realized destruction to be the most persuasive argument to mend their ways. In some ways, now is a better time to make the argument for categorical preservation. I’m not one of those people who argue that the thousands of St. Louis buildings that came down had to, because there was no other way for St. Louis to renew itself save through some blight, population loss and decrease of density. That’s not true. I think that a variety of forces that conspired to destroy urban areas could have been stopped, but the warning signs were too unclear and the faith in technological progress too strong for the people who were on the front lines. Today we simply know more, can do more, and see the lines of defense so much more clearly.

Categories
Demolition Historic Preservation Midtown

SLU Applies for Demolition Permit for Historic Livery Stable

by Michael R. Allen

On May 31, St. Louis University applied for a demolition permit for the former livery stable building at the northwest corner of Locust and Channing (see record here). The possible demolition had been rumored for months. If rumors of end use are true, expect a parking garage or lot where a restored and vital part of the Locust Street business district could otherwise be.

For more information about the stable, see my June 2 post, Alley Closure Bill Indicates Livery Stable May Be Endangered.

Categories
Downtown Mid-Century Modern

Gentry’s Landing Spared from Make-Over

by Michael R. Allen

Word on the street says that the owners of the Gentry’s Landing apartment building have scuttled the plans to “re-skin” the building and demolish the adjacent three-story office building for a new condominium tower. Looking at renderings that someone posted to Urban St. Louis, I am relieved. The old plan was a travesty of brick veneer, EIFS and European pretense — dominant tendencies of the style I’ll call post-postmodern (because that sounds as ridiculous as examples of the style look).

The new plan is to rehabilitate the existing buildings, completed in 1967 as part of the Mansion House Center project designed by Schwarz & Van Hoefen. While certainly not an original work of modern architecture, and flawed from an urban-functionalist standpoint, Mansion House managed to achieve the simplicity of form and material as well as drama of site that typifies good modernism. Over forty years later, the buildings maintain a graceful occupancy of the site just west of the Arch grounds. In the face of one of the hardest modernist acts to follow, they don’t take the stage — they are a part of it. Sometimes, architecture need not make a huge point about anything. Sometimes, it needs to provide visual support for something else — another building or a natural setting. As a lesser contemporary example, Mansion House provides excellent visual support to the Arch as well as that excellent little essay of a building, the Peabody Coal Building.

Of course, Mansion House does manage to make one innovation: the rooftop of its attached parking garage (actually the biggest drawback since it creates a blank wall facing the Arch)
is landscaped as a contemplative garden. The garden is one of downtown’s best hidden assets, and a great use of what would otherwise be a wasted and rude parking deck. Also, Mansion House has steadily provided affordable apartments in the heart of downtown. In 1966 and in the condo-crazed 21st century, this service is much needed.

Split ownership at Mansion House forestalls preservation planning. Still, perhaps one day the other owners will make some wise choices, including making more of the garage roof.

Categories
JeffVanderLou North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North St. Louis Place

Plywood and Public Policy

by Michael R. Allen

Tonight, I was part of a group of three Old North St. Louis residents and one other city resident who undertook securing a building owned by a holding company controlled by Paul J. McKee, Jr. This particular house sits on a block McKee’s agents have worked hard to bust, and in just a few months since purchase has been stripped of new aluminum windows exposing other more historic features intact inside.

We in Old North are a vigilant bunch, and we don’t let our heritage get plundered. Upon spotting the empty window openings, my neighbor Barbara Manzara spread word and gathered an impromptu board-up crew. Now, the building is secure before irreplaceable parts are gone. Of course, boards won’t protect against brick rustlers who have destroyed many other vacant north side buildings owned by McKee’s companies, the city’s Land Reutilization Authority and other private parties. These boards can — and will — be removed. But residents will probably return to keep the boards on.

On the larger scale, though, we face hundreds of vacant buildings owned by McKee. Four people can’t get to them all, and most of the buildings don’t have even one person in close proximity to keep watch. Many are already so damaged by theft and weather that they may be lost forever.

Vigilante board-ups are no substitute for a public policy that would protect historic community resources and make them part of the burgeoning revitalization of the north side. Until there are assurances from city officials that they are interested in preservation planning as well as code enforcement for the area that McKee has targeted, residents will continue to take action — and be suspicious of those who are charged with safeguarding their rights as city residents to participatory government.

Categories
Central West End St. Louis Board of Aldermen

After Reopening Olive, Kennedy Wants to Close Whittier

by Michael R. Allen

Alderman Terry Kennedy (D-18th) has introduced Board Bill 91, to close Whittier south of McPherson. The lack of north-south arteries across the central corridor reinforces the local divide between the north and south sides of the city. I probably don’t need to mention that the north side is the loser in this split.

On May 7, Urban Review reported that Kennedy had relented and reopened a closed section of Olive Street in the Central West End. Unfortunately, this good act is followed by another proposed street closure in Kennedy’s ward. The problems that street closures create are certainly not limited to one or two in particular; the same problems that the Olive closure caused will occur once Whittier is closed.

Categories
Historic Preservation Midtown

Alley Closure Bill Indicates Livery Stable May Be Endangered

by Michael R. Allen

Rumors that St. Louis University plans to demolish a former livery stable at 3401 Locust Street are bolstered by a bill introduced at the Board of Aldermen by Ald. Marlene Davis (D-19th). Board Bill 129 would vacate the alley in the eastermost 239.47 feet of the alley on the block bounded by Locust on the south, Theresa on the west, Washington on the north and Channing (also known as Josephine Baker) on the east. This is the stretch of alley between the old stable and a parking lot owned by St. Louis University to the north.

R.W. Crittenden built the livery stable in 1885 with later additions in 1888 and 1889. A major renovation occurred in 1902 from plans by architect Otto J. Wilhelmi. In the 20th century, the stable served as a sales room for the Salisbury Automobile Company; it stood in the stretch of Locust known as “Automobile Row.” In recent years, the brick building was painted white and had its windows filled in. However, broad arched entrances are evident in addition to other masonry elements common to the local interpretation of the Romanesque Revival style.

With this board bill, the fate of the building seems bleak. Landmarks Association of St. Louis lists the building on its 2007 Eleven Most Endangered Buildings list.