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Events

Thursday: Esley Hamilton Talk on St. Louis County’s Mid-Century Modern Religious Buildings

Thursday, May 3
Church of the Open Word, 1040 Dautel Lane, Creve Coeur
6:30 p.m. — Tour of the Church of the Open Word
7:00 p.m. — Lecture by Esley Hamilton
FREE

Modern STL, in conjunction with The Church of the Open Word, Garden Chapel, will proudly present a talk by Esley Hamilton, Preservation Historian for St. Louis County’s Department of Parks and Recreation, who will discuss the recent county-wide survey of Mid-Century Modern religious buildings. The program takes place Thursday May 3, at 7:00 p.m. preceded by a tour of the Garden Chapel at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served during the tour and after the program.

The United Methodist Church in Kirkwood (1964, Schmidt, Perlsee & Black) is one of the County religious buildings included in the survey.

More than 400 churches were built in St. Louis County between 1940 and 1970. A surprisingly large number of them proved to be significant for their architecture. In particular, many congregations chose the style that is coming to be known as Mid-Century Modern. Their architects produced some of their best work in these buildings. Hamilton will review the highlights of this study in the setting of one of the noteworthy churches of that era, the Church of the Open Word, located at 1040 Dautel Lane, off Olive Boulevard, in Creve Coeur. The church was built in 1958 and was designed by Schmidt & Black.

Continue reading “Thursday: Esley Hamilton Talk on St. Louis County’s Mid-Century Modern Religious Buildings”
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Central West End

Preservation Through Recession on Laclede Avenue

by Michael R. Allen

In June 2006, the St. Louis Business Journal reported the news that Highland Homes had placed the two-story residential building at 4557 Laclede Avenue under contract. At the time, the late 19th century two-flat housed the offices of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. Highland Homes planned to demolish the building and construct a six-story, 32-unit condominium tower estimated to cost $10 million to build. Unit prices would have started at $200,000.

Photograph from nextSTL.com.

Highland Homes’ website made the extravagant claim that the new building would be the greenest building in town: “4557 Laclede building combines innovative design based on recycled and sustainable materials with high efficient systems. This environmentally friendly approach makes 4557 Laclede the first LEEDâ„¢-certified building St Louis.”

Urbanists heralded the increase in population density in the Central West End that the building’s residential units would bring. Champions of urban design cringed at the clumsy design of the tower, and some preservationists even furtively examined moving the threatened building. In the end, however, bankers made the decisive move.

The building at 4557 Laclede Avenue as it appeared this week.

In April 2007, Highland Home announced that the deal had fallen through, and that they would not seek to demolish the building at 4557 Laclede Avenue. While there was talk of another developer looking to revive the interest in the site, ultimately the value of the old building was higher. Today, the building at 4557 Laclede sports a for-lease sign.

The advertisement is just one of the signs that recession makes likely — at least momentarily — the preservation of existing buildings. Highland Homes’ proposal for the site proved unrealistic for the city’s economic circumstances. Continued use of the building as office space, without major rehabilitation, alternately is viable at present. Preservationists won’t always enjoy this sort of fortune, so the challenge remains translating the inertia of economic forces into a broader cultural argument about cultural heritage.

Part of that cultural heritage consists of fine buildings like the house on Laclede Avenue, with its slate-clad turret and human-scaled buff face brick offering infinitely more delight and connection with tradition than the EIFS and concrete of the once-proposed replacement. Yet another part of that heritage is economic sense. St. Louis has never been a city of excess, and our built environment reflects that. Yet when we again aspire skyward in the Central West End, no doubt the question of preserving this little building on Laclede Avenue will again be asked.

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Events

Tonight: “Battle for Brooklyn” Screening Ends Open/Closed

Location: The Luminary – 4900 Reber Place
Time: 7:30 p.m.

The film Battle for Brooklyn follows the story of reluctant activist Daniel Goldstein as he struggles to save his home and community from being demolished to make way for a professional basketball arena and the densest real estate development in U.S. history. Along the way, he falls in love, gets married and starts a family while living in a vacated building located at the heart of the project site. Over the course of seven years, Daniel spearheads the movement against the development plan as he and the community fight tenaciously in the courts, the streets, and the media to stop the abuse of eminent domain and reveal the corruption at the heart of the plan.

Panelists:

Homer Tourkakis: Owner of “Eminent Dental,” Arnold, MO. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that non-charter cities can exercise the power of eminent domain. Tourkakis was forced to sell his business to THF Realty. He used the proceeds to open his new practice.

Desy Schoenewies: Long-time resident of the Carrollton neighborhood of Bridgeton, MO and author of the “56 Houses Left” blog, which documented the neighborhood’s demolition for a new runway at Lambert International Airport.

Michael R. Allen: Director of the Preservation Research Office.

(RSVP on Facebook) While not necessary, RSVPs are welcome. Please pass along the invitation. All films and events are free and open to all.

Categories
Events

DeMenil House Book Sale

From the Chatillon-DeMenil House:

Volunteers are lifting weights and reading up a storm in preparation for our sixth annual Used Book Sale, to be held May 19th – 20th across the street at the amazing Lemp Brewery complex. This is one of our biggest annual fundraisers, and we can still use your help! We already have more books than at any previous sale, but we’ll have room for many many more. Drop off your book donations at DeMenil between 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. We’re also accepting donations of card tables and other lightweight folding tables. We have two big volunteer days scheduled: moving day on May 12 (beginning at 10:00 a.m.) and sorting day on May 15 (4:00-8:00 p.m.).

Categories
Downtown

St. Louis Centre Lives

by Michael R. Allen

Postmodernism’s preservationist audience has yet to emerge, but when it does it may find solace in the fact that not all of St. Louis Centre was altered in its parking garage transformation. On the top level of the garage, now called the Seventh Street Garage, remains the barrel vault skylight that once illuminated the mall atrium. The atrium’s openings have been infilled by new floor plates, and the interior’s white and green supplanted by the gray din of utility, but the lighting remains beautiful.

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Events

Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis, April 18-23

Preservation Research Office is pleased to be one of the sponsors of Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis, the second annual St. Louis vacant property conference. This year’s conference offers a multi-day schedule that includes panel discussions, workshops, film screenings and activities in north city’s O’Fallon neighborhood.

Last year’s conference laid the groundwork of awareness of how vacancy affect St. Louis’ neighborhood quality of life, our sense of place and our economy. This year Open/Closed examines strategies of intervention that can transform vacant property into cultural and economic assets — including managed decline, historic preservation, landbanking, redevelopment, agriculture and arts programming.

Here’s the schedule at a glance:

Wednesday, April 18
Spanish Lake Premiere Screening
7:30 p.m., Location TBA

Thursday, April 19
Assembly Required: The Making and Remaking of St Louis
7:00 p.m., 2900 Sidney Street

Friday, April 20
DETROPIA Screening and Discussion
6:30 p.m., Soldiers’ Memorial

Saturday, April 21
Main Conference: Panels, Discussions and Keynote by Jay Williams
9:00 a.m., The Sanctuary, Red Bud at Rosalie avenues

Monday, April 23
Battle for Brooklyn Screening and Discussion
7:30 p.m., The Luminary Center, 4900 Reber Place

Check out the full schedule online: openclosedstl.org.

Categories
Demolition Industrial Buildings South St. Louis

Pevely Dairy Plant Demolition Underway; Captain D’s Preserved

by Michael R. Allen

At the start of April, St. Louis University started demolishing the Pevely Dairy plant at Grand and Chouteau avenues. Last month, the Planning Commission overturned a series of Preservation Board decisions about applications to demolish components of the complex. The result of the Planning Commission decisions was the immediate approval of demolition of every part of the plant save the landmark corner office building, which can be demolished once the university secures a building permit for its new ambulatory care center.

Upon completion of demolition, the only building to remain at one of south city’s busiest intersections will be the esteemed work of Nautical Revival architecture, the Captain D’s franchise at the northwest corner of the intersection. Urbanists who proclaimed that removal of the Pevely plant would rob the intersection of urban character stand in the wrong.

Let us not forget to thank the Planning Commission’s members for wise and world-class judgment.

Categories
College Hill North St. Louis

Depletion, West Florissant and Prairie

by Michael R. Allen

It’s a good thing that we have the myth of a “Team Four Plan,” because that allows us to ignore the convergence of neglectful property owners, ineffective aldermen, minimal city planning oversight and new-development-obsessed community development corporations that are more responsible for the depletion of north St. Louis than consultants who prepared a memorandum nearly forty years ago. A close read of that document does not yield the phrase “College Hill” even once, so the blame for that neighborhood’s despair lies elsewhere.

The blame for the impending demolition of the privately-owned one-part commercial block at 3773-3783 West Florissant Avenue, at the intersection of Prairie Avenue, can at least partially be laid upon recent rains that besieged a weak parapet wall that has now fallen into the building. Yet the rains are not why the building has been listed as a vacant building since 1990, and when the waters pour upon a vacant lot for the next few decades we will have to trace the demise of commercial life at the intersection further back than 2012.

Categories
Events

“Spanish Lake” Kicks Off Open/Closed

Open/Closed: exploring vacant property in St. Louis (April 18-23) will kick off with an exclusive sneak peek of the documentary film Spanish Lake. The screening will offer extended clips of the film in progress and will open the Shuttered Film Fest, a series of films focused on issues related to vacancy and urban change. Spanish Lake native and director Phillip Andrew Morton and producer Matt Jordan Smith will attend and lead an open discussion following the screening. Shuttered will feature four films and Open/Closed will present five days of panel discussions and presentations. Additional details to be released. Visit Open/Closed 2011 to review last year’s event.

Venue: Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Boulevard TBA
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 18 / 7:30 p.m.
Cost: FREE

Coverage by Thomas Crone for St. Louis Magazine: “Open/Closed Conference Gives St. Louis a Peek at Doc-in-Progress, ‘Spanish Lake'”

Continue reading ““Spanish Lake” Kicks Off Open/Closed”
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National Register South St. Louis Southwest Garden

Reber Place Historic District Listed in National Register

Looking west through Tower Grove Park's Kingshighway entrance, which aligns with Reber Place.

On March 12, the National Park Service placed the Reber Place Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places. Lynn Josse and Michael R. Allen of Preservation Research Office prepared the nomination for the new historic district, located just west of Tower Grove Park. The Southwest Garden Neighborhood Association commissioned the nomination using funding provided by Alderman Steve Conway (D-8th). The project also includes a nomination of a second area in the Southwest Garden neighborhood west and north of the Missouri Botanical Garden. That area is nominated as the Shaw’s Garden Historic District, and final listing is pending.



View Reber Place Historic District in a larger map

Reber Place reflects both the ambitious aspirations of its founders and a series later development patterns based on streetcar access, the presence of industry, and the rise of the builder-developer as a key force in the landscape of middle-class St. Louis. This six-block area, tightly confined between Tower Grove Park and the Oak Hill and Carondelet Railroad, has significant associations with patterns of residential planning usually seen in the successful private places of St. Louis, with rail-oriented suburban development, and with later typical patterns associated with the rise of the builder-developer and the streetcar grid.

Houses in the 4900 block of Odell Avenue.
Washington University architecture professor Austin Fitch designed his family's residence at 4943 Reber Place (1930).

Development began in 1885, when the first contributing feature (Reber Place’s defining central median) was created, and ends in 1957, when the neighborhood’s major institution, Holy Innocents Parish, completed its building program. With the exception of commercial intrusions and parking lots at the northeast and southeast lots of the district, Reber Place is exceptionally intact.

The house at 2721 S. Kingshighway, built in 1889 by F.C. Mueller & Bro.

Margaret Reber platted Reber Place in 1885 on two tracts of land that she had owned with her husband, Judge Samuel Reber. Judge Reber was known in St. Louis as a circuit court judge of good judgment and mild temper. He wrote the well-known (and controversial) majority opinion upholding Missouri’s anti-Confederate test oath at about the same time the United States Supreme Court was striking it down.” Judge Reber died in 1879.

Read the entire text of the nomination here.