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Bohemian Hill City Hospital Flounder House South St. Louis

Bohemian Hill and City Hospital

Here is a view east toward City Hospital from just south of Picker Street in Bohemian Hill, taken by me in 2002. Here we see visual density and variety giving way to the relatively monotonous architectural mass of the City Hospital. The distinct individual buildings mitigate the impact of the hospital complex, which otherwise might be overbearing. The relationship also makes full use of that human-scaled unit with which we build towers and flounder houses alike: the brick.

While each building is the sum of its parts — here those parts are largely brick — each urban vista also is the sum of a multitude of elements. Limiting the complexity by reducing the number of and small disparities between each element diminishes the view as well as the pedestrian experience.

Five years later, this view does not exist — but we have the chance to remake it. However, we should keep in mind that the view seen here was over 100 years in the making, and just as the brick or the building becomes an element that composes a larger view, so is each year during which the view emerges. While it is easy for a person to manipulate space and material, it is impossible to manipulate time.

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Abandonment East St. Louis, Illinois

The Lights of East St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

With a cool spring breeze and great jazz on the truck radio, I found myself driving through East St. Louis last night. I don’t mean driving on the highway, either — I came in from the south through Rush City on 19th Street, headed east on Bond Avenue, north on 17th Street, east on Broadway until I was on the Eads Bridge headed back home. This was around 6:30 p.m., and already the sun had set to make way for a charcoal night sky.

While it was dark out, East St. Louis was very dark. There are several reasons, but foremost is the lack of remaining occupied houses. The loss of buildings has meant the loss of life and light, factors that keep a neighborhood from feeling like a ghost town after nightfall. There is also the lack of adequate street lighting that enhances the feeling that one is not in a city but some other ethereal place not quite settled enough to be a city but too populated to be a rural area.

As I drove north on industrial 17th street, where almost every building, factory and lot is abandoned and there are few streetlights, I glanced eastward. There I saw the St. Louis skyline glimmering as if no ghost town at all stood just to the east. I had a strange feeling, and felt vulnerable.

No, I did not fear any trouble at human hands. I felt a worse fear — that East St. Louis is something that has life only in the past and death in the future. The present moment is thus a terrible recognition.

Of what? Perhaps the painful conclusion that just east of my city another city may be effectively dead — but still inhabited by people who need jobs, schools and city services that a dead city cannot provide.

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Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North

Mullanphy Effort Accepting Online Contributions

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has launched a PayPal account through which donations for the effort to rebuild the Mullanphy Emigrant Home‘s collapsed southern wall.

While some temporary structural stabilization work has been completed, the effort is still over $100,000 away from reaching the money needed to rebuild the masonry wall.

We are a generous city with much wealth and love for our history. Can we not rebuild that wall? It seems like a reasonable goal with no ambiguity — every dollar collected will literally go to the needed bricks, mortar and labor.

The result will be that a neighborhood in the midst of renewal will retain one of its most significant buildings as an anchor for continued development.

Tax-deductible contributions now can be made here.

(PS: For candidates seeking to do good with leftover campaign funds, this is a great cause.)

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North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

McEagle Land Acquisitions

by Michael R. Allen

McEagle Land Acquisitions, LLC was chartered on February 16.  Will the sundry LC’s and LLC’s involved in the “Blairmont” project begin selling to this company once the Distressed Area Land Assemblage Tax Credit Act is passed?

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Abandonment Riverfront Urban Exploration

USS Inaugural Still Around

Remember the USS Inaugural that was moored on the St. Louis wharf to serve as a museum? During the 1993 flood, the former Navy minesweeper was swept away itself. However, it did not get very far. As “Memory_machine” tells us in his blog entry “Undergroundozarks goes to the Library / The Wreck of the Inaugural”, the wreck of the ship is just south of the MacArthur Bridge, and readily visible.

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Northside Regeneration

Blairmont in the ACC

There is a good article by Matt Murphy about the “Blairmont” project in the current print edition of Arch City Chronicle.

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Mayor Slay Mid-Century Modern

Lambert Terminal Will Be Rehabbed — Carefully

by Michael R. Allen

According to a post on MayorSlay.com, the $100 million airport terminal reconstruction project will “carefully rehab” airport’s landmark main terminal by Minoru Yamasaki. As the region’s most widely used modernist building, the integrity of the terminal is an extremely important expression of local stewardship of mid-century design. Alongside rehab, the terminal could be enhanced by removal of some of the intrusive canopies in front and other later alterations. While full restoration is unlikely, a sympathetic rehabilitation could restore much of the modern character of the terminal that is a worldwide gateway to the city (just like another modernist icon).

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Brecht Butcher Buildings Demolition North St. Louis

Destruction of the North Side Continues

The Brecht Butcher Supply Company Buildings on February 26.

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2007 St. Louis Election People

Yay for Christian Saller

by Michael R. Allen

Once again, there is some coincidence between what I have written about this election cycle and what Sixth Ward aldermanic candidate Christian Saller has stated.

Two days ago, Saller posted this statement to his campaign blog:

I do not and have not disparaged my opponents throughout the course of this campaign. I am happy to be cordial and polite when we see each other in person and have made it my policy to avoid saying anything about them when I go door to door or otherwise interact with constituents in the 6th Ward. I have campaigned on my merits and why I think I would perform well as a full-time alderman with a strong emphasis on constituent service and economic development. In my view, the unfortunate tendency of some to attempt to “trash” opponents or to even subtly demean them in some manner diminishes the caliber of the entire campaign, so I have not and will not engage in such behavior. As candidates, we differ in style and substance, though I am willing to assume that we all have sincere and honorable intentions in our respective approaches to the job.

While it’s easy to disagree with that last sentence, overall the statement is exemplary. Hopefully it will carry some weight with voters and other candidates, at least at some point in the future.

Categories
Old North Preservation Board

Preservation Board Meeting in Review

by Michael R. Allen

The Preservation Board meeting yesterday was short and pretty sweet. Credit is due to the current board members, who are a very thoughtful group on the whole who take their decisions seriously. The new members — David Richardson and Mike Killeen — are good fits for the board, and frequently make excellent points. Chairman Richard Callow continues to enrage haters by running the meetings effectively and efficiently while respecting the input of community members and applicants who testify. This is a good mix and creates the city’s only regular forum for the public discussion of urban design policy. Attendance from bloggers, architects and activists is steady. Now, if only the board could increase the scope of its powers and solidify its decisions against the trump card of aldermanic blighting ordinances!

Here are some of the highlights of yesterday’s meeting:

#5 Washington Terrace: Preliminary review of a plan to build a new house on one of the city’s finest private streets. The discussion on design was interesting, although it fell along predictable lines. Many residents turned out to testify because the local district ordinance stipulates that the trustees of Washington Terrace must approve plans before construction. That’s well and good, but not an appropriate covenant for the Preservation Board to uphold. There are courts of law for those fortunate enough to live on streets with restrictive covenants; the Preservation Board’s enabling ordinance does not allow it mediation powers in such instances, as Commissioner John Burse pointed out during the discussion. Deferring decision in this instance would set a bad precedent for future ambiguity. Fortunately, the Board voted 5-1 (with Anthony Robinson abstaining) to approve preliminary review so that the builder can begin to work with staff at the Cultural Resources Office on design details. While more difficult, the trustees will have to enforce their own restrictive covenants without using a design review board to do so. If the approval covenant is important to most residents, they will enforce it. Perhaps the local district ordinance for Washington Terrace should be amended to remove the separately-enforceable covenant clause, since there is no way the Preservation Board should be in the business of upholding anything other than municipal design ordinances.

2352 S. 11th: Your typical already-installed glass block basement window case. However, the appellant got in a good line when told that historically his basement windows would have had bars. “Historically, my house was boarded up,” he said. The Board voted 5-1 to uphold staff denial of his permit for glass block.

6811 and 6815 Magnolia: The owner of these two small frame cottages, contractor Joe Pauk, supposedly purchased them for rehab in December 2006 but quickly decided they were too far deteriorated for repairs. The houses are condemned by the city’s Building Division, but Pauk has not had a structural assessment save his own. The appeal was denied by a unanimous vote.

2605 and 2619-21 Hadley: Haven of Grace took a big step by agreeing to retain 2619-21 Hadley and motball it for future use. Executive Director Diane Berry announced this during her presentation; chairman Callow wisely asked her to state on the record her intention to also rehab the building. Citizen testimony from myself and Claire Nowak-Boyd followed, although the news of the compromise changed the direction. However, along with other residents we are still concerned about the long-term integrity of the Murphy-Blair National Historic District into which much of Old North falls. That district has lost around 60% of contributing resources since listed in January 1984, which comes down to roughly 370 historic buildings lost in less than 25 years. I still think that 2605 Hadley is savable, but I think that the good new design and density that Haven on Grace brings is important for the neighborhood. Under these circumstances, the compromise is fair.

Petition to designate the McKinley Heights neighborhood as a local historic district: Approved unanimously. The “opposition” that turned a previous public meeting on the matter into a circus did not show.