Categories
Demolition Granite City, Illinois

Granite City Loses a Fine Building

by Michael R. Allen

Bad news from the metro east: The R.S. Holstein Company Dry Goods Building is downtown Granite City has fallen to the wrecking ball. Here we see the illogical results of reactionary planning. The building was in fine physical condition and was one of the most likely candidates for adaptive reuse downtown. However, the particular circumstances of its ownership and its being placed on a condemnation list foreclosed any chance of its future being considered as part of a broader strategy for historic preservation in the downtown area of Granite City (which still retains an impressive architectural stock). Granite City is working on a preservation plan, but to date has not enacted any effective ordinances that would render any preservation plan meaningful.

Then again, until Illinois passes legislation creating a Missouri-style historic rehabilitation tax credit, adaptive reuse of such buildings is highly unlikely.

Categories
Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

Bonetti Looks at St. Louis’ Threatened Mid-Century Homes

by Michael R. Allen

In “Out with the Old”(January 14) and “St. Louis Architectural Legacy is Fading Fast” (January 21), St. Louis Post-Dispatch art critic David Bonetti offers a serious look at the current rash of demolitions of mid-century modern homes in St. Louis. He examines threatened and recently lost works by William Adair Bernoudy, Harris Armstrong, Samuel Marx and Isadore Shank.

It’s refreshing to find that the daily paper’s critic is tackling an important preservation issue. While the onslaught of demolition of all building types continue, there still is a window in which a greater cultural appreciation of mid-century architecture can be forged.

The critical questions are: Will that appreciation come to pass? And, if it does, will it come too late to make a difference in efforts to preserve more than a handful of examples?

Categories
Chicago Rehabbing

Rehabbing in Chicago

by Michael R. Allen

While searching for information online about coping tiles and flat roofs on historic buildings — we are preparing to make the leap and add them to our building, which likely has never had them — I found very few resources.

No matter, because I stumbled upon the delightful Chicago Two-Flat, a rehab chronicle that deals with one couple’s efforts to restore one of the blog’s namesakes. Their effort is further along than our own, replete with permanent roof, floors one can walk across with bare feet and other comforts. However, their detailed and compelling accounts of the little projects that always overtake any notion of “completion” are so true to life that I can’t stop myself from reading despite being in a much more rudimentary stage of rehabbing.

I’m astounded to find such a familiar project from Chicago, which doesn’t have the visible and well-organized do-it-yourself rehab community that St. Louis has. A relatively newer housing stock, higher prices and greater population density may keep Chicago from being a major rehab mecca that St. Louis has become, but that doesn’t mean no one there is trying. In fact, Chicago Two-Flat‘s blogroll offers links to other Chicago house blogs covering the twists and turns of taking old buildings into healthier lives.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

Blairmont Commentary Review

The Actors – Douglas Duckworth (Random Talk on Urban Affairs, January 17): Duckworth examines the possible development perspectives involved with the plot to landbank the near northside.

McEagle’s plans for McHousing on the Near North Side? (At Home blog, January 10): I don’t know why I neglected to point this out last week. Hopefully y’all read it already. Stefene Russell and company make this blog, companion to At Home magazine, more timely than most of our readers would be inclined to think.

Categories
Art Events

"City As Art" Opens This Weekend

From our friends at Art St. Louis:

Art St. Louis presents “City As Art,” a new exhibition on view January 22 through March 1, 2007. The community is invited to join us for a free opening reception 7-9 p.m. this Saturday, January 20, 2007 (the Gallery will be closed during the day January 20).

This multi-media juried exhibit was open to artists residing in the St. Louis region (includes a 200-mile radius of the metro area). Artists were asked to submit artworks in all styles that address the theme of “City As Art,” specifically works that explore urban life, people and/or the built environment and/or address Samuel Johnson’s quote, “A great city is. . . the school for studying.”

Serving as jurors for this exhibit are Shannon Fitzgerald, former Chief Curator, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and artist Bob Hansman, Associate Professor, Washington University School of Architecture, St. Louis.

Hansman & Fitzgerald selected five artists works to receive Awards of Excellence. Those Awards will be made public at the opening reception on January 20th.

Art Saint Louis is non-propfit art organization serving the St. Louis region for over 20 years. Art Saint Louis is located in the heart of downtown St. Louis’ Old Post Office District at 917 Locust Street (on Locust between 9th and 10th Streets). The Gallery is free & open to the public Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Sundays & holidays. For more information, contact Robin Hirsch at robin@artstlouis.net or 314-241-4810 (2#).

Categories
Demolition Theory

Space, Time and the City

by Michael R. Allen

Proposition: The city is a series of arrested moments of time called “spaces.” The only way in which we know architectural spaces exist is through navigation — movement in time that suggests space.

Questions:

Who is above the law of time? Who can arrest a moment?

Who gets to define what moments are more worthy of replay through the perpetuation of some spaces and the annihilation of others?

Does the destruction of space then become an onslaught against time itself? The destruction of an arrested moment seems futile. In the end, we all have time and only some us seem to have spaces.

Ultimately, no one can own a moment. Such ownership would require control of time itself. Whether or not anyone can own a space in time is also questionable.

Moments are frightening to anyone who wants total control of history. To those who find in the arrested moments some delight, time is not an erasure of our works or of our dominance but a succession of joy. One moment’s passage into the next creates a new possibility — like movement across the urban landscape from one building to the next.

As we move through time, we create spaces built out of moments. Viewed in light of a live lived in time, preservation of space is the suggestion that certain momentary experiences are joyous and worth repeated experience, and that the coexistence of such experiences is desirable. Those who disregard such moments seem to suggest that time itself should be conquered for a unitary idea.

(Photograph: Demolition of a storefront building at the southeast corner of Union and St. Louis, August 2006.)

Categories
Demolition Documentation People

Worth Watching: Vanishing STL

by Michael R. Allen

Anyone who spends much time studying the lost buildings of the city — especially those in the central corridor — is bound to run into architect Paul Hohmann. Now chief architect for Pyramid Architects, Paul has been involved in many rehabilitation projects over the years. Privately, Paul has studied our city’s historic architecture and amassed a wealth of knowledge and photographs. Sometimes I have concluded that Paul and I are the among only a handful of people in the city to have paid attention to an obscure building that was demolished — or at least the among the few who still mourn its loss and recall its details.

Now, Paul is sharing his record of lost buildings through a new blog specifically dedicated to local buildings that have been demolished since 1990, Vanishing STL. So far, Paul has posted two entries. The most recent is on the well-known Beaumont Medical Building on Olive Street, wrecked for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts building. The other entry is about the lesser-known Olympia Apartments at Vandeventer and West Pine.

The entries have abundant photographs to covey both the facts and the beauty of these lost buildings. While the perspective is retrospective, notice the present perfect tense of the blog name. The name is apt given that the vanishing of the historic city is far from over, and far from slowing.

Categories
North St. Louis Old North

Skyline Views from the Northside

by Michael R. Allen

The rear of our home faces south. This is the time of year for the glorious skyline view. Sure, we can see the skyline from the tallest part of our roof at any time. But we have to wait for the leaves to fall to see the skyline from inside of the house.

To see such a view at all fills me with awe. No matter how small St. Louis’ towers seem compared to other cities, the grouping of them still makes me appreciate the fact that my species can build anything so tall and permanent.

To see this view from inside of my own home is even greater still. I’d say that the north view of the syline is the one that makes it seem more lively and makes the city seem more robust and metropolitan. At night, when the skyline glows with the dozen different colors lighting windows, roofs and spires, it’s hard to think anything bad about this city’s future — or present.

There are many other homes in my neighborhood, Old North St. Louis. Some are taller, and some are closer to downtown. Those with skyline views each have a unique vantage point, and many may have a better one than ours.

These views are anyone’s free for life with the purchase of a near northside home. There just might be a few homes for sale here, too.

Categories
2007 St. Louis Election People

Christian Saller Can Tell You Where He Stands

by Michael R. Allen

Although I no longer make endorsements in this blog, and there really aren’t many candidates running for the Board of Aldermen this year, I have to point out one of the candidates.

Christian Saller, a Democrat running in the Sixth Ward, actually has a historic preservation platform. He also has well-defined stances on problem properties and neighborhood development.

Recall my call for such artciulated stances in my December 7 post entitled “Candidates and the Built Environment.” At least one candidate has answered the call.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

The RFT Covers Blairmont

Phantom of the Hood – Randall Roberts (Riverfront Times, January 10)

Finally, print media attention on Blairmont. Let there be more!