Categories
Chicago Downtown

Macy’s Letters Go Up, A Legacy Comes Down

by Michael R. Allen

Yesterday, crews arrived to downtown’s Railway Exchange Building to begin installation of the giant Macy’s sign that will replace the already-removed Famous-Barr sign atop the building. (Famous-Barr’s midtown warehouse already sports new lighted Macy’s signs, although at night the old signs show behind them and read “M–Y’s and “MA—S” instead of a confident “MACY’S.”) This passage of signage is the fulfillment of a year-long transition that ends the lifespan of St. Louis’ last local department store chain. Famous-Barr was an original tenant of the Railway Exchange, built in 1913.

While the May Company had long allowed the downtown flagship to diminish in quality and allure, the store was a reminder that St. Louis was once a vibrant metropolitan city that had developed fine examples of the modern downtown department store. After the other downtown department stores — notable Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney in 1967 and Stix, Baer and Fuller in 1984 — closed, the downtown Famous-Barr remained open and seemed like it would be open forever. Its hours cut back over the years, and its patrons were a small group toward the end. Yet the cultural value of its presence showed that downtown St. Louis still kept one tradition alive, and not in a second-rate fashion but in a particularly local way.

Now the downtown space will be occupied by one of the hundreds of Macy’s stores, a fact that insults both St. Louis and New York. Both cities have lost the uniqueness of the brand identity, albeit slowly: the stores had long become chains, changed ownership and standardized merchandise long before Federated bought both Macy’s and Famous-Barr. Now, the slump hastens and only the most culturally deprived shoppers will be enthusiastic to shop at Macy’s, a name that now denotes only a department store rather than a certain sort of store.

Of course, the downtown department store itself is an endangered species, and has been close to extinction since the late 1960’s. Now that downtown St. Louis real estate is highly valued again, perhaps the downtown store here is about to go extinct. The value of the Railway Exchange Building to Federated Department Stores exceeds the value of the store inside. With their move to cut jobs downtown, there will be empty office floors to remodel. The company is also planning to consolidate the store on the five lower levels of the building, vacating two floors used by Famous-Barr. Could it be only a matter of time before the store is liquidated and the building converted to condominiums? The crews working on converting the store have not been remodeling the space as much as putting a new coat of paint on surfaces. The work looks tentative, as does Federated’s commitment to downtown.

Whatever happens to the downtown Macy’s store, the period of the urban department store is effectively over in St. Louis. We have lost our last downtown department store, a passing that even forty years ago would have attracted more attention than it does today. With the combined factors of population dispersal, market dominance by discount and specialty retailers, the retail downtown centered on the Galleria shopping mall and the May Company’s own treatment of the store, the downtown Famous-Barr is mourned by few. Contrast that with Chicago, where Federated is stamping the meaningless Macy’s brand on the meaningful and loved downtown Marshall Field’s store. This move provoked anger and a petition campaign, neither of which prevented the destruction there because neither caused any economic consequence to Federated’s decision.

The cultural consequences of the loss of downtown department stores and of downtown commercial culture are pretty big, though. Still, as long as few people recognize those consequences (and people have had fifty years to recognize them), what difference does closing the the last local downtown department store make to all but a handful of people?

Categories
Downtown Infrastructure Missouri Legislature Streets

Despite Some Flaws, MoDESA is Good for St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

I’m definitely a supporter of the Missouri Downtown [and Rural] Economic Stimulus Act (MoDESA), which permits cities to take up to 50 percent of both state sales taxes and state withholding taxes generated by new development projects. The law gives cities up to 25 years to continue using this share of state taxes, and restricts use to infrastructure needs.

As someone who works downtown and who has been walking the streets of downtown since I was a child, I am excited at the prospect for infrastructure improvements downtown. Beyond Washington Avenue, most downtown streets could use anything from repaving to new sidewalks. All of downtown could stand new street, consistent lighting — the current distribution of new, fancier lights around new projects gives the appearance that the city doesn’t feel that the basics are important for all of downtown. Much of downtown infrastructure has deteriorated past the point of acceptability.

Of course, the city has not had the means to make big repairs. Much of downtown’s current infrastructure dates to 1950’s-era projects that were built when the city still had a residential population of around 856,000 people. The sort of public works consistency possible with that tax base is a distant memory nowadays, although completely necessary to attract new residents and business owners — and retain existing ones.

MoDESA is akin to the State Historic Tax Credit in that it levels things financially for older areas of great cultural importance that have special economic troubles that may otherwise be exceedingly difficult to address. Like tax credits, the MoDESA money is not a subsidy but an allowance to apply revenue generated in these areas to improvement projects — and since it applies to any area in the state that matches certain criteria, it doesn’t unfairly benefit cities or small towns. It just gives them some help.

There are political problems with using the money, and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay has already made moves that are suspect. For instance, the first MoDESA project was originally going to be based entirely on projects by the Pyramid Companies, and was revised to include one other project by another developer. However, this proposal will target the desolate Tucker Boulevard streetscape for improvements — long overdue.

A disappointing move on the Mayor’s part is his appointment of the local authority to oversee the MoDESA money. There are nine voting members and two non-voting members, including the mayor. The roster of the mayor’s eight appointments consists entirely of longtime political players, five of whom are members of city development boards, one of whom works for St. Louis University, and one of whom is Downtown St. Louis Partnership head Jim Cloar. Most glaring is the absence of a single downtown resident. Isn’t this the mayor who mentions downtown residents in every speech about development in the city?

MoDESA, however, is a good thing for the city and state despite the expected flaws in its application.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration Old North

Blairmont Goes to the Mall

by Michael R. Allen

The two-and-a-half-story, side-gabled house at 1416 Montgomery Street is Old North St. Louis is fairly nondescript. Its front elevation probably bowed years ago, and was taken down and relayed with a harder modern brick and newer fenestration. The rebuilt front wall is boring, although the side and rear walls show the house to be a late-19th-century house that could be restored to some more appropriate appearance.

But doing that work would take imagination, patience and a faith in the neighborhood’ renewal. You see, this modest dwelling is right across the alley from the so-called 14th Street Mall, the two blocks of commercial buildings fronting a part of north 14th Street closed in 1971 to form a pedestrian mall. The mall conversion killed the vitality of the commercial district, and by the 1990s only a few stores remained open. Today, the only occupied storefronts on the mall are a hair salon and a storefront church. Every other first floor is boarded or broken in, and the upper floors of the multi-story buildings have been empty even longer.

All of this is set to change, though, as a major collaborative redevelopment project is in the works. Most of the buildings on the mall are now owned by a partnership between the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group and the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, two organizations whose work is often miraculous. Imagine what they might do with 1416 Montgomery Street if they had the chance!

All we can do now is imagine, because at a recent Sheriff’s tax sale the house and its accompanying garage sold to one of the Blairmont companies. Although their purchases in Old North have slowed, they still wanted to buy a derelict building that needs to be included in the 14th Street project.

Perhaps Blairmont can rehab the building better and faster than the partnership. Perhaps I am a dog person. Perhaps someone will rebuild the buildings cleared for the Arch. Perhaps asbestos is actually a nutrient…

Categories
Architecture

Buffalo Preservationists Offer Illustrated Dictionary, Architectural Center

by Michael R. Allen

Forget what a caryatid is? Can’t remember if a dripstone and a hoodmold are one in the same?

Well, the exhaustive Illustrated Architecture Dictionary from Buffalo, New York, will answer your questions with its exhaustive list of architectural terms. Each definition is illustrated with an example from buildings in Buffalo.

The dictionary is part of a network of websites edited by members of the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier (which runs the Buffalo Architectural Center and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County. Thanks to the dedicated folks in Buffalo, there is more information about the history of Buffalo architecture on the Internet that there is about that of almost any other American city. And visitors to the city can partake of the many exhibits, lectures and tours offered at the Architectural Center. Through their inter-related projects, Buffalo architectural historians have created an interpretive model for other mid-sized American cities.

(Thanks to Lynn Josse for sending me the link to the dictionary.)

Categories
Demolition North St. Louis

Carpenters Building Demolished

Never been to the Carpenters Building before? Well, you missed your chance, because a developer demolished the Preston Bradshaw-designed building last month.

You can take some consolation is being able to read about the building here.

Categories
Demolition JeffVanderLou North St. Louis

Lost: Carpenters’ Building

The author took all of the photographs used here on June 19, 2006.

by Michael R. Allen

This summer, St. Louis lost a building designed by noted architect Preston J. Bradshaw, and no one turned out to mourn its passing. In June, wreckers began dismantling his Carpenters Building (1930) at the southwest corner of North Grand Boulevard and Cozens Avenue. By this point in time, few observers could recall the glory days of this building as the home of the Carpenters’ District Council, now located in well-known quarters on Hampton Avenue. Few historians who may have noted the building’s pedigree passed by the building in recent years, and it largely went unnoticed. (No biographical sketches of Bradshaw note the Carpenters Building.) The building’s new owners didn’t care to study its history; they wrecked the building to build another section of the ungainly strip mall that is MLK Plaza.

Yet, once upon a time when Grand Avenue was a bustling thoroughfare, trade unionism was strong and architects of Bradshaw’s ability took commissions of all sizes, the Carpenters’ Building came to stand here. The union council built the building in 1930 for the cost of $50,000, which was substantial then. The design by Bradshaw is typical of the idiosyncratic Renaissance Revival style he employed frequently in the 1920s and early 1930s for hotel, apartment and office buildings. There is an abundance of buff terra cotta ornament at the base and crown of the building, while the shaft is an unadorned plane of brick. Here, the building is two stories, so the effect of this ornament program is quite different than on taller buildings that Bradshaw designed. Rather than accentuating height, here the design accentuated the width of the primary elevations, giving the building a stately presence worthy of one of the city’s most prominent thoroughfares. The abundance of terra cotta, manufactured by the Winkle Company of St. Louis, makes the short building project a message of abundance and tradition that suited the unions of the day. As with many of Bradshaw’s designs of that period, here he masterfully balances the Renaissance Revival idiom with a modern emphasis on form.

Bradshaw (1880-1949) designed many famous local buildings, including the Chase Hotel, Paul Brown Building, Coronado Hotel and, late in his career, the modernist Ford Apartments. He came to St. Louis in 1907 after having studied architecture at Columbia University and having briefly worked for McKim, Mead and White. He became known for his prowess at designing hotel and apartment buildings, and was among the best-known St. Louis architects of the first half of the twentieth century. His works are expressions of the optimism of the growing city as well as explorations of the possibility of modern architectural forms. Many of Bradshaw’s are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and have been restored in recent years.

The Carpenters Building is not among those that will be so cherished.

Categories
Demolition Fire Midtown

Stairs to Nowhere

by Michael R. Allen

The limestone steps on August 28, 2005. Photograph by Michael R. Allen.
Grandel Square, known in the 19th century and early twentieth century as Delmar Avenue, once was one of Midtown’s populated residential streets. The Midtown area was settled as early as the 1850s, but was not subdivided with official streets until after the 1861 death of Peter Lindell, who owned much of the area. His Lindell’s Grove was subdivided by heirs and became a fashionable and somewhat bucolic retreat for wealthy and middle-class families eager to escape the polluted and overcrowded inner city.

By 1875, when Compton and Dry published Pictorial St. Louis, Midtown streets were lined with dense clusters of mansions on streets like Lindell and West Pine and stone-faced townhouses in Second Empire, Romanesque and Italianate styles on streets like Delmar, Olive and Westminster. Delmar’s residents were upper-middle-class to wealthy, building townhouses more lavish than those on neighboring streets but more restrained and smaller than the largest houses in the neighborhood. The wealthier residents used limestone to face their homes, while others used sandstone. The house at 3722 Delmar, built in 1884, was among the neighborhood’s most impressive townhouses, with an ornate Italianate style, pale limestone face and a three-story height.

The fashionable blocks of Midtown changed by 1900. Just as residential growth spread outward from downtown, so did commercial growth, Streetcar lines made it easy to live in Midtown — and to work there. Some of the older houses were purchased and demolished for new office buildings on Grand and Lindell, and the neighborhood’s character changed. Some observers saw Midtown becoming a second downtown, and the wealthiest residents began to flee further west.
A photograph from the Heritage/St. Louis architectural survey, taken around 1972, shows the house at the top of stairs. Apparently, it had recently caught fire and was in use as the “Grandel Square Hotel” in its last years.

By the 1930s, the neighborhood was scene to office buildings, hotels and the “Great White Way” of movie theaters. People crowded the streets day and night, even as the Great Depression’s arrival spelled the end of dramatic growth for the city. Houses remained, but many were converted into multi-family apartment buildings or rooming houses. The house at 3722 Grandel Square was one of the old townhouses that were carved up into a hotel. The other likely fates of the day — demolition, alteration by storefront addition — were actually worse. Even by the time of this house’s demolition, many other houses of this type in Midtown were long gone.

The house burned around 1970, and was demolished by 1975. The staircase from the sidewalk to the front door was not removed, though and remains to this day. The limestone steps have cracked and settled, making the once-elegant proposal of ascending an earthier endeavor. Those who climb the steps stand on a rugged lawn, no doubt still containing parts of the house pushed into the foundation during demolition.

Next door to the east, the Meriwether House — built by Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, a descendant of Meriwether Lewis — survives as one of the dozen or so single-family dwellings remaining in Midtown. (Around 1900, there may have been as many as 250 such buildings.) The Meriwether House, almost demolished in 1999, closely resembles the house that stood at 3722 Grandel Square, giving those who see the stairs to nowhere a good idea of where they once lead. The owners of the Merriwether House are completing a restoration and condo conversion that will brings its appearance and use full circle.



Now is again a good time for the Meriwether House. Photograph by Claire Nowak-Boyd (August 28, 2005).

The stairs next door, also owned by the Meriwether House’s owners, aren’t as likely to return to their former life. They may remain tentatively in place, but no more shall they lead to a Gilded Age manor. However, perhaps the stairs will bring awareness to newcomers that the Merriwether House is no singularity, and that Midtown once was something far from the sun-baked plain of asphalt and grass that it has become.
Categories
North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

Our Dirt

by Michael R. Allen

What is shown in this photograph? Does someone in Old North St. Louis own an incontinent elephant? Are Mississippians returning? Is this a previously-unknown north side mountain?

The answer is mundane: It’s a pile of fill dirt in our yard that will be used to level out sinking foundation cavities from buildings that once stood on the lots next to our house. Once leveled, the lots can become a staging area for our mason as he begins the masonry work needed on our house.

The dirt is completing a cycle: it comes from the excavation of a foundation for a new house in Old North St. Louis on North Market Street.

Categories
North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

How Not to Patch a Hole in the Wall

by Michael R. Allen

Here is a piece of a cardboard package containing a mesh drywall patch. The cardboard was mounted as a patch and covered in drywall joint compound…

…right here, on a wall in the former first floor kitchen at the rear of our house. A fire damaged the first floor in 2003, and the owners made repairs. Many of the repairs are rather shoddy, as you can see. Here, it seems that they removed the old outlet box by making a big hole in the wall. After installing a new outlet box, rather than make proper repairs to the drywall, they hastily patched the mess with this curious method. (The new wiring, by the way, was done well.)

When recently removing tiles and sub-floor in this room, I decided to finally get rid of the bad patch. I will remove more drywall and “patch” with a properly cut piece of drywall.

Categories
Downtown Ghost Signs

Permit No Nuisance

A ghost sign emerges from a blocked-in loading dock cavity at the alley side of the former Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney warehouse building at 917 Locust Street.