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.

Categories
Downtown Historic Preservation

The Periodicals Room

by Michael R. Allen

Walk into the main hall of the St. Louis Central Library these days, and you will notice a cluttered appearance. The once-grand space was originally the main reading room, a place that delicately balanced the public purpose of the library and the private sphere of reading. Nowadays, the hall is chock full of computers, kiosks of videos and other intrusions. There are even books on shelves lining the grey marble walls. This has been the case for a long time, but the situation has been worsened recently by the library’s decision to close the periodical room and move the periodicals and the legions of periodical readers into the already-overcrowded main hall.

The reason behind this decision was the creation of a “reception room” for special events and lectures that raise money for the library’s capital campaign. Thus the drive to build money for what could be an architectural travesty — a plan is afoot to remove the original glass-floors book stacks system on the north side — has led to a momentary loss of one of the many ornate and supposedly public spaces of the library.

One of the wonderful things about the downtown library is that no matter how prosaic a reader’s purpose may be, her reading experience will take place amid the visually stimulating opulence of Cass Gilbert’s Italian Renaissance design. The periodicals room was a hopeful sight — students, travelers, homeless people and downtown workers all getting their news under a finely-detailed painted and coffered ceiling. The scene was prosaic itself — perhaps too much so. However, the periodical room and its use illustrated exactly why a city would have a public library at all.

Now, the periodicals room sits empty, dark and locked off during the day. Pass through the lobby and you get a glimpse through the bars that keep readers out of this reading room. An empty podium stands where the reference desk once was. Meanwhile, across 14th Street, the library’s annex building (formerly the Farm & Home Credit Bank) sits underutilized, with large expanses of empty space. The first floor features a wide-open and unfinished space; many of the offices located there provide ridiculously generous space for their occupants.

The Central Library will necessarily make big changes in the coming years to adapt to changes in use, and the capital campaign is an essential component of the changes. However, some parts of the library are working fine — like the periodicals room. Obviously, raising money for routine and functioning parts of the library is not easy. Donors are probably more attracted to buzzwords related to new technology and big changes. However, many people come to a library to handle a newspaper or book in the company of others. Print itself is a technology, but one that tends to reinforce socialization far more than the visual-centric technologies with which our libraries flirt nowadays. Hopefully, in the end, Central Library will still have a periodicals room.

Categories
Demolition Downtown Historic Preservation Midtown

News from Other Blogs

– MayorSlay.com reports that the Powerhouse Building at 11th and Clark, part of the Municipal Garage and Services Building, will soon undergo renovation.

– Vanishing STL discusses St. Louis University’s proposed demolition of the 19th century mansion at 3740 Lindell. Paul Hohmann considers the building Second Empire, while I think that it’s more Italianate.

Categories
People

Departures

by Michael R. Allen

Randall Roberts, the senior member of the Riverfront Times staff, DJ, KDHX host, cultural gadabout, satirist and trend-setter departs for Los Angeles at the end of June.

Randall’s departure will be followed in July by that of Joseph Heathcott and Ashley Cruce. Joseph is professor of urban studies at St. Louis University, counselor to Landmarks Association of St. Louis, board member of the Red Brick Community Land Trust and outspoken urbanist.  Ashley is professor of social work at St. Louis University, where she also directs the Center for Social Justice. Joseph has taken a professorship at the New School in New York City.

May the coasts cherish the talent, vision and joy these St. Louisans have shared here. May St. Louis become a city that could have kept these folks around longer.