Categories
Brecht Butcher Buildings Demolition Northside Regeneration Old North

Demolition Permit Issued for Brecht Butcher Supply Buildings

by Michael R. Allen

On October 31, the city issued an emergency demolition permit for the burned part of the Brecht Butcher Supply Company Buildings. The contract supposedly has been let to Bellon Wrecking. Oddly enough, the burned section has been left unsecured since the devastating fire last month. There has been no fence around the building, and the permit didn’t come until three weeks after the fire.

While I am upset to see the building go, I am also upset that the Building Division did not see fit to order the owners to erect a fence or board up a building that was condemned on October 10 and was in terrible, dangerous condition inside. The building is directly across Cass Avenue from the Greyhound Station, too, making its post-fire appearance a rather sour introduction to this city.

When a building this large has such a terrible fire, safety precautions should be taken until renovation or demolition can begin. It’s an insult to residents of the near north side than neither the Building Division nor Blairmont Associates LC — which can afford to finance millions of dollars in property purchases — did not see fit to secure the burned buildings.

Hopefully, the demolition site will be secure although I doubt it. I also hope that the wreckers only demolish the fire-damaged center section, and leave the flanking buildings standing. Even though the remaining buildings will look strange severed from the connector, there is no need to lose all of them. Cass Avenue needs some architectural stability, and given how little historic fabric remains it is very reasonable to preserve what is left.

Categories
Columbus Square Housing Mid-Century Modern

Open House at Neighborhood Gardens

by Michael R. Allen

On the weekend of October 21-22, 2006, Spanish Lake Development Company held an open house at Neighborhood Gardens to display the results of their two-year rehabilitation project. The event coincided with the annual Downtown Housing Tour. After a long period of rehab and an even longer period of decay, the buildings looked alive again!

The renovated buildings look much as they did when they opened over seventy years ago. The vision of Spanish Lake Development principals Jim and Dan Dalton was to restore the buildings to their true architectural qualities. Thus, they restored or rebuilt almost all of the original steel sash windows with new double glazing, retained exposed block walls and concrete floors in the stairwells and put ceramic tile over the floors rather than carpeting. The only real change to the buildings were the creation of larger apartments through doubling of the small original units. Mostly, the Daltons have kept the timeless qualities of the buildings — qualities created by durable materials that allowed the buildings to survive dereliction without major damage.

The project is nearing total completion, but some buildings are already ready for leasing. Unlike the proposed Bottle District across the street, the redevelopment of these buildings has happened on a short schedule, without the Mayor’s smiling support and without huge fanfare. The persistence of the Daltons has taught the city that even a troubled, iconic abandoned place is not too far gone if someone dares to bring it back to life. That someone need not be a famous developer, either — it can be two guys who care. May the “new” Neighborhood Gardens thrive.

Categories
Downtown

Wasted Space at the Old Post Office

by Michael R. Allen

The sidewalk on Olive Street in front of the Old Post Office in downtown St. Louis is unusually wide, taking up the parking lane. The expanded sidewalk is almost the perfect size for an urban plaza, with views of the Olive Street building canyon that create visual excitement. There is enough space for casual lounging, small speeches or concerts, outdoor dining, brown bag lunching or numerous other activities that happen in the downtown of a large city.

Yet the recent renovation of the Old Post Office ignores the inherent possibility of this space, giving it all of the drama of a doormat. The space is mostly flat with granite and concrete paving, skimpy plantings that are visually dull and no provision for seating. There is absolutely nowhere to sit in this space, save for the steps of the Old Post Office itself — and that is forbidden.

The redeveloped Old Post Office doesn’t even give the front of the building the weight of the main entrance. Once inside, one hits a static wall and must make a jog down a hall at the left to reach the impressive space under the building’s skylight. Why this is hidden from the main entrance is truly baffling, and creates a very confused arrangement of spaces.

Meanwhile, the building’s non-office tenants, a Pasta House Pronto restaurant with outdoor seating and the Central Express Library Branch, are both located on the Locust Street rear elevation of the building. The rear elevation faces one of the most lifeless and ugly half-blocks in the city: a mess of cobbled-together parking lots (one is even paved in gravel!) butted up against elevations of the Orpheum Theater and Mayfair Hotel never intended for public display.

This is the site that civic leaders keep pushing for a downtown plaza, despite the fact that it is absurdly large for any space intended to foster lively activity and be an attractive focal point. This site suffers from the presence of another absurd “plaza” one block east in front of the US Bank Tower, and from rather lackluster views. It also would be redundant in a downtown with a mostly-underused Gateway Mall that consumes eighteen blocks right down the middle. I suppose the proposed plaza is the perfect spot to be for those who think that the most wonderful piece of architecture in St. Louis is the Locust Street elevation of the Old Post Office.

Meanwhile, the really dramatic space lies underutilized. The plaza in front offers an urban enclosure not found in the ridiculous “plazas” that civic leaders have built over the years. Really, all that needs to be done to liven it up would be better plantings and some benches. There’s enough street life on Olive Street to fill in the rest. A truly healthy urban public space doesn’t need a name, a plan or a program to create vitality; it only needs to be ready for people to use.

Categories
Theory

Sounds Like a City

by Michael R. Allen

Think about this on your way home from work, or on your weekend walk to the neighbor’s house: If your block were a song, how would it sound? What does the setback of each house sound like? How about the distance between houses? Vacant lots?

Building heights, styles, forms, fenestration and materials all create metaphoric rhythms and harmonies in the essays of architectural critics. Try to make the metaphors into true translation of architecture into music. If you live in an older part of a city, you will likely find discordant notes, varied rhythms and strange tempos. These may become in your mind a coherent composition, or they may seem like an improvised structure created by a free jazz ensemble. No matter how few houses remain on a block, some song emerges. Even the bad new buildings can be “played” in the mind.

Start to imagine blocks as songs, neighborhoods as operas, the city as the whole range of possible musical expressions. While this may seem far-fetched, I refuse to believe that such information is not embedded in the great architecture of my block, my neighborhood and my city.

Categories
Fire Louis Sullivan

Sullivan-Designed Getty Tomb Destroyed by Fire

by Dan Kelly (Special to Ecology of Absence)

(Chicago) Early Monday morning, as firefighters played canasta nearby, the tomb of Carrie Eliza Getty burned to the ground in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. Investigators are perplexed as to how the solid limestone and bronze-gated mausoleum caught fire, but chose not to pursue an inquiry, suggesting that, perhaps, the corpse of Ms. Getty was operating a blowtorch. The fire also defied the laws of physics by leaping into the night sky and descending upon and consuming the Sullivan-designed Ryerson tomb several hundred yards away. Traces of fire damage and spots of urine were likewise found covering Sullivan’s tomb nearby.

“It’s a shame, really. I guess. I mean, I don’t especially care.” said local developer Vic Sharkbastard as he and a surveying crew measured the 20 foot area formerly occupied by the Getty Tomb for a future, 500-unit condo. “But, hey, these things happen.” Sharkbastard then cleaned the mud off his boots by scraping them against the gravestone of photographer Richard Nickel.

“Chicago has to go forward, it can’t go backward,” said Mayor Richard Daley. “If you’re going backward, you’re not going forward. People like the fires. They’re pretty. It’s nice to pack a lunch and watch the fire. It’s a tragic loss of some of the city’s history, but not really tragic, because, you know, you’re going forward with the fire and the lunch and not backward.” Mayor Daley then unwittingly on accident and without malice sat down on a dynamite plunger, the force of his ass starting a chain reaction of blasts, causing Carson Pirie Scott, the Auditorium, the Gage group, and the Krause Music Store facade to implode. “Oopsy. Heh heh heh,” said Daley.

Categories
Chicago Fire Louis Sullivan

Fire Strikes Adler & Sullivan’s Harvey House

by Michael R. Allen

Yet another Adler & Sullivan building burns in 2006, scarcely a week after the Wirt Dexter Building fire. This time it’s the George Harvey House, built in 1888 and the last remaining frame structure designed with either Louis Sullivan or Dankmar Adler involved. The house is a total loss.

The owner of the home, Natalie Frank, had discussed demolition earlier this year, meeting with opposition from preservationists. She eventually announced plans to renovate the much-altered house using the full original blueprints Richard Nickel rescued from a previous owner.

The Chicago Sun-Times has the bad news here.

Lynn Becker has commentary here.

Categories
Chicago Terra Cotta

Bull

Terra cotta ornament, Stony Island Boulevard, Chicago. (Taken July 2005.)

Categories
Adaptive Reuse Historic Preservation Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North

New Life for the Mullanphy Emigrant Home

by Michael R. Allen

Given its institutional form and floor plan, and the dire need to retain and restore its special architectural character, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home seems best suited to an institutional or cultural use rather than any of the most likely prospects for reuse.

The building would make an excellent museum or exhibit center, library, school or hostel. I think that adapting it for use as apartments, condominiums or offices might involve architectural compromises and inefficient floor plans. Perhaps now is the time for near north side leaders and city officials to figure out what the building should become, and how the new use could be endowed.

Due to shrinking funding under the Bush and Blunt administrations, this is a bad moment to launch a new museum or cultural center. Yet the Mullanphy Emigrant Home would make an excellent museum of the city’s ethnic heritage, an outstanding small art museum, a cool alternative school, a great architectural center emphasizing vernacular forms and styles, or a youth hostel in conjunction with more public uses. Rarely does the city have the chance to restore such an old and important civic building. This is a momentous opportunity for the city, and time for creative thought.

Categories
Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North

ONSL Restoration Group Now Owns the Mullanphy Emigrant Home

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has closed on its purchase of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. Now, the hard work begins.

Here is a letter from the Restoration Group’s Executive Director, Sean Thomas:

Dear Friend of Old North St. Louis:

Today the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group has taken a huge leap of faith. As of this morning, we are the proud – and very nervous – owners of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home building at 1609 N. 14th Street, just a few blocks north of Downtown St. Louis. Although we’re a community-based not-for-profit organization with an extremely tight budget, our Board decided to take this action because nobody else seemed willing or able to save the buiding from demolition or collapse. But we did so with the support and encouragement of many who recognize the building’s historic and architectural significance. Now we’re at a point where we need more than words of encouragement – we need your financial support to preserve the building.

On April 2 of this year, severe wind gusts hit the Italianate brick structure that was built in 1867 to house the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. These winds knocked out much of the south wall and led to an order from the City of St. Louis Building Division to demolish the building. Because of determined efforts by Old North St. Louis
Restoration Group, aided by many friends inside and outside of city government and a structural engineer’s report indicating that the building was not in imminent danger of collapse, the City rescinded the demolition order. Thankfully, the building has survived over the past seven months without additional damage. If the building is going to survive through the winter, though, we will need to take immediate measures to shore up the south end of the building and re-build the wall. Because the total bill for acquisition, insurance, and stabilization work will equal at least $150,000, more than half of the amount we have to raise every year for our basic organizational operations, we need financial support well beyond our usual sources of revenue. To help us reach this goal, we’re asking all who care about Old North St. Louis to make a contribution of whatever amount they can afford.

The Old North St. Louis Restoration Group is dedicated to re-building the neighborhood in a way that incorporates the community’s rich history and respects the beauty and architectural significance of the built environment – and the skill and craftsmanship of past generations that created it. We invite you to help us with a contribution to the preservation of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home. Please send a tax-deductible contribution to us as soon as you can, using the enclosed form. And if you know of anyone else who cares about preserving our city’s unique architectural heritage, please encourage them to contribute as well.

Thank you!

Sean Thomas
Executive Director

(By the way, Preservation covered the effort to restore the Mullanphy in a recent article.)

Categories
Architects Downtown

The Presence of Taylor and Enders

by Michael R. Allen

Stand at the corner of Eleventh and Washington streets in downtown St. Louis, and face north. On your right, across a parking lot, is the Catlin-Morton Building, built in 1901. Ahead, across another parking lot, is the Hadley-Dean Building, built in 1903. To your right, at the northeast corner, is the Bee Hat Company Building, built in 1899. On your immediate right is the robust Merchandise Mart Building (originally the Liggett and Myers Building), built in 1888-9.

As you scan these buildings, you will notice similarities: heights around seven stories tall, deft articulation of the masonry walls of the buildings, repeated arches, Classical Revival ornament balanced with modern forms. The bearing-wall Merchandise Mart has to be the finest Romanesque Revival building downtown, and the Hadley-Dean’s austerity anticipates the arrival of modernism in St. Louis.

However, these buildings share something more fundamental: the same architect, or perhaps architects. These buildings were designed by the prolific Isaac Taylor and his chief draftsman, Oscar Enders.

In a downtown marked by demolition, it seems rather fortuitous to the legacy of Taylor and Enders that their buildings remain such a strong presence. On the 1000 block of Washington, the Merchandise Mart occupied the entire southern side of the block while the north side, including the later Dorsa Building, is book-ended by Taylor and Enders’ designs of the Bee Hat Company Building and the Sullivan (alter Curlee) Building at Tenth and Washington, built in 1899.

Of course, other Taylor and Enders works have not been so blessed; the Columbia Buidling at Eighth and Locust was cut down to two stories in 1977, and the Silk Exchange Building at the southwest corner of Tucker and Washington burned and was demolished in 1995.