Categories
Benton Park Mullanphy Emigrant Home North St. Louis Old North Severe Weather South St. Louis Switzer Building

Storm Update

by Michael R. Allen

Wednesday night was rough on us. The front quarter of the flat roof membrane on the three-story section of our house blew off, pulling up the recovery layer and uncovering the decking. Water poured in, ruining drywall on the third floor and seeping down into the second floor. Meanwhile, my truck was hit by a street tree that fell and the windshield was damaged.

When I returned home, I was able to get a tarp from a neighbor and make a hasty covering although continued lightning cut short my efforts. Our power stayed on long after most neighbors lost theirs, but went out before midnight. It remains off, although just last night I saw lights back on inside of Crown Candy Kitchen, where perishables had been evacuated by distributors.

Yesterday, I stayed home and obtained more tarps from neighbors and set to making a sturdier repair. An ex-neighbor who has been helping friends rehab a building that he sold to them was around and helped me with the work. I used various scrap 2×4’s, 1×4’s and other pieces to nail down the tarps around the edges. I further anchored the tarps with bricks.

At the moment, severe weather has returned and I am at work hoping that my work holds up today. No matter what, we will return to sleep inside of our brick oven tonight to keep thieves away.

Other news from the storm:

Winds took down part of the east wall of the Switzer’s Building on Laclede’s Landing.

Downtown East St. Louis took an incredible hit, with several small historic commercial buildings in states of partial collapse or with severely compromised roofs. The Stockyards area was hard hit, with the old entrance sign bent and the Robertson’s feed store suffering a small collapse. Somehow, the Armour packing Plant and the Murphy Building escaped further damage.

A corner storefront building at Sidney and Lemp in south St. Louis has part of its eastern wall collapse.

Two houses in a lovely Greek Revival row on Howard Street between 13th and 14th streets lost parts of their second-story walls. A commercial building dating to te 1870s in the 1300 block of Benton Street — the old Someone Cares Mission — collapsed; it was already fire-damaged. The nearby Mullanphy Emigrant Home thankfully did not incur further damage.

While officials promised to help evacuate people, seniors down the street at the Jackson place senior center were still sitting around outside while the building lacked power. Ambulances came to the center all day long.

Once again, I was reminded that urban areas have grossly inadequate strategies for coping with summer heat. Winter weather can impair driving, so a lot of emergency planning covers winter storms. Summer heat waves always catch cities off guard, even though they are far deadlier than winter weather.  I can’t believe that over 400,000 people in the region lack power during 100-degree heat.

Categories
Historic Preservation University City

Washington University Plans to Demolish Three Loop-Area Buildings

by Michael R. Allen

This news just came in from a tipster:

Washington University is seeking demolition permits from University City for three buildings: apartment buildings at 701 and 707 Eastgate north of Delmar, both built in 1925, and a house at 6654 Washington south of Delmar, built in 1918. The apartments have been empty for a few years, while the house was rented to students until this spring. The university claims that the costs of rehabilitation of these buildings exceed the return on the investment, but has no plans to redevelop the sites if demolition occurs.

I have no idea how far along in the process the university is, but I assume that the matter will follow proper demolition permit procedures and be considered by University City’s Historic Preservation Commission.

Categories
Chicago Louis Sullivan

Chicago May Lose Another Adler & Sullivan Building

by Michael R. Allen

Just in case anyone thought that Chicago learned anything from the Chicago Stock Exchange debacle in 1972 (or the Pilgrim Baptist Church fire earlier this year), Lynn Becker brings us news of yet another threatened Adler & Sullivan building. In an article in the latest Reader (ah, if St. Louis could have a weekly so fine!), Becker writes that the owner of the George Harvey House — probably the sole surving frame building by the firm — wants to tear it down for a condominium building.

Categories
North St. Louis Old North Rehabbing

Basement Wall Repair on Sullivan Street

by Michael R. Allen

Last night at around 10:00 p.m. I finished relaying a small section of our foundation wall. This wall is in the original part of our house, on which construction began in November 1885 and was completed sometime in early 1886. I this period, the most common foundation for a typical residential building like ours was one of limestone rubble, roughly coursed and held together with a fill of dirt and lime and then pointed with a soft, lime-heavy mortar.

When we purchased the house, a few sections of our foundation had significant erosion problems due to the intrusion of tree roots, water infiltration and — most common — application of hydraulic cement that fell off, pulling out mortar. After making sure that the tree and water problems were eradicated, I have systematically ground these areas out and repointed them with mortar that’s a little harder than the original type used but soft enough to keep the limestone faces from spalling, a common problem brought on when people point their foundation walls with inappropriate hard mortars or cements.

The area that I finished last night was an area under a window opening where the inner stones had fallen out completely, leaving an area about a foot deep, three feet tall and four feet wide without stone. The cause of this small collapse seems to be due to water infiltration when the basement window opening was left open and crudely boarded (not sealed) for about two years following a fire in the basement in 2003.

First, I cleaned the area of the loose fill mixture and other debris. Then I ground out mortar and fill around the opening to make a good key into the stable sections of the wall. I began laying the stones a few weeks ago, one course at a time because rubble stone needs to set slowly so that the courses don’t fail or push out while setting. I worked in evenings and on weekends. Of course, since the rubble stone was packed in while the entire width of the wall was being raised systematically, I had trouble getting the same stones to fit their places in the wall. I also did not know the original placement, although the outside stones carried traces of a green paint that someone once painted our basement walls (creating another problem for the mortar in the process). How did I get the wall section firm without simply cheating by using mortar to fill gaps?

I turned to the resources at our disposal: the foundation walls of the seven buildings that stood on the lots adjacent to our house that we also own. All of these walls are intact under the ground, and some are clearly visible poking up through the dirt. I mined the top levels of these walls to obtain stones to fit where the original stones could not. Sometimes, I used a hammer and chisel to cut stones to fit.

In the end, I spend many hours and about $25 in mortar to rebuild the foundation area. Time will tell if my work will hold up, but it sure beats the bids ranging from $500 to $1,100 that we had to repair that area. And our bidders proposed using block or other ways of making the job easier for them — but not cheaper for us. I’d rather make a repair using a traditional method and pick up the skills to make it again if need be.

Categories
Fire Hyde Park Media North St. Louis

Post Slacks on Coverage of the Turnverein Fire

by Michael R. Allen

The Associated Press had a great story on the Turnverein fire. Which daily papers ran it?

The Belleville News-Democrat, on the front page of its July 6 St. Louis edition.

The Kansas City Star. The Columbia Daily Tribune.

Guess which daily paper did not run the AP story, while also not updating its own scant coverage. That’s right, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which had earlier ran the pathetic headline “Firefighters battle blaze at old athletics complex.”

Once again, the Belleville News-Democrat has better coverage of the city of St. Louis than the Post.

Categories
Fire Hyde Park North St. Louis

Nord St. Louis Turnverein Gym Survived Fire

by Michael R. Allen

View of the gymnasium northwest from Mallinckrodt Street. All photographs taken on July 5, 2006.

Remarkably, the 1898 gymnasium facing Mallinckrodt Street survived the blaze that destroyed much of the rest of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein on the night of July 3, 2006. This survival is largely due to its later fire-proof construction that avoided the use of structural timber that the other sections of the complex used. The gymnasium utilizes steel tied into the masonry walls for its structure. The gym floor is supported by steel columns that are cross-braced for durability. These columns support steel joists under a concrete slab floor that adequately carried the weight of the roof debris that descended during the fire. My inspection on July 5 revealed that the floor was stable across the building, with no collapsed areas. I was startled to see how stable the floor was. Of course, the wooden flooring was largely deteriorated before the fire.


View northeast from the corner of 20th and Mallinckrodt streets.

The masonry walls appear stable, except for sections where the parapet walls had deteriorated and lost integrity. A few sections came lose during storms in the spring, and when the roof burned the falling debris knocked lose larger areas of the walls. All four walls remain mostly intact, though. Steel trusses span the width of the building, with each truss tied into the walls. Some girders are no longer tied due to masonry disintegration. However, most are stable. These trusses are braced at two points in the center of the building by lateral steel channels.

Looking north inside of the gymnasium.

Overall, the structural condition after the gymnasium remains good after the fire.

Some additional interior views:

Categories
Abandonment Fire Historic Preservation Hyde Park North St. Louis

Nord St. Louis Turnverein Burns

by Michael R. Allen

The following photographs show the state of the Nord St. Louis Turnverein on July 4, 2006 after a major fire brought about and end that long seemed inevitable. These photographs, taken by Claire Nowak-Boyd, depict a destabilized mass barely recognizable as the landmark that generations of north siders loved. Instead, we see charred wooden beams and joists amid the stub end of walls that once rose two and three stories.

Firefighters responded to the blaze at around 11:00 p.m. on Monday, July 3. The cause is undetermined, but fireworks are likely to be involved. Eyewitnesses have mentioned bottle rockets being shot into the building by neighbors, but the Fire Department has no comment.

The fire quickly destroyed the Turnverein’s oldest part, the 1879 building facing Salisbury Street. That part had suffered some roof damage in winter 2004 and its walls were partly toppled by high winds in April 2006. Left exposed, its wooden roof joists were dry; left without a roof, its masonry walls were barely held up at all.

The fire must have been hot enough to spread into the more stable 1890’s additions, and those sections were mostly destroyed except for the 1898 gymnasium facing Mallinckrodt, which lost its roof but retains stability of its masonry walls. Preservation of the shell of this section is still feasible, although the rest of the complex is basically impossible to save.

Lenders were close to foreclosing on DHP Investments, the company that had pledged to rehab the Turnverein before its founder disappeared in April. A rehabilitation project may have happened, but no one will know for sure now. The Building Division will likely begin an emergency demolition in the next two weeks, and will probably take down the entire complex.

Total demolition would be a shame. Although the disparate parts worked visually as a patchwork whole, the 1898 gymnasium could stand as a stern reminder of what once stood at the site. However, the current state of the Hyde Park neighborhood is too grim for such reminders, and is under so much duress that there is no time or money to make careful decisions. The “if’s” in this story are overwhelming. German-Americans who left for the suburbs, the Turner organization, the do-nothing alderman, complacent preservationists, a string of mayors who could care less and Doug Hartmann of DHP Investments all share some blame here. This end easily could have been avoided, but for inaction.

There is no rest for the north side today, or any other. At least one other historic building — this one on North Market Street in Old North St. Louis — burned on the same night as the Turnverein.

Here’s the view southeast from Salisbury at 20th:

The view along 20th Street shows how little of the building’s profile remains:

The view of the east wall of the original building shows that the extent of loss is severe:

The 1898 gymnasium addition lost its roof but retains stability:

UPDATES:

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article on July 5 that claims that the fire is a “total loss.” This is untrue, because the steel-structure 1898 gym remains stable and could be reserved.

A neighbor reported seeing the Henry Rollins Band, the Dead Milkmen, Naked Raygun and other bands at the Turnverein during the 1970s and 1980s when promoters booked many shows there.

Categories
Alton, Illinois Metro East Neon

Good News From the Jacoby

Press Release from the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton, Illinois:

The Madison County Arts Council, through a generous grant from the Gateway Foundation, will begin renovation of the historic neon sign that graces the front of their building — the Jacoby Arts Center, located at 627 E. Broadway in Alton, Illinois.

“Re-lighting the 2-story Art Deco sign will provide a strong identity for the Arts Center, help reenergize downtown Alton and revive a historic icon,” said Kathryn Nahorski, Executive Director for the Arts Center. “We are honored to receive this grant from the Gateway Foundation — an organization that supports projects including the Great Rivers Biennial, the lighting of the Gateway Arch and Sculpture on Campus at SIUE.”

The building that housed Jacoby’s furniture store for nearly 100 years was donated by the Jacoby family to the Madison County Arts Council in 2004. In 2 years, the building has been transformed into a community arts center, housing a gallery, gift shop and education wing. The current project, construction of three new classrooms, is nearing completion. These new facilities will allow the Arts Council to provide a broad offering of visual arts classes and meeting space for community groups such as the writers’ guild.

The Madison County Arts Council was founded in 1981 as an umbrella organization serving Madison County Illinois and adjacent areas. The Jacoby Center is the largest and most prominent of the undertakings of the MCAC. Other programs include ARTEAST, Community Arts Access, Arts in the Park and Connect the Arts.

The Madison County Arts Council is grateful to the Gateway Foundation for their generous support.

Categories
Carondelet Demolition Industrial Buildings

Carondelet Coke Plant Will Fall

by Michael R. Allen

According to a press release on the Mayor’s campaign site, the old Carondelet Coke plant will be redeveloped. This is a shock to those of us who assumed that its overgrown, ruinous landscape would always be around for autumn walks and clandestine film making. Then there was Dylan Haasinger’s quixotic and hopeful plan to retain the passive life of the site by turning it into an urban nature preserve. Alas, it’s back to the economic life for the land at the confluence of the Mississippi River and the River Des Peres — and a far less interesting but cleaner life it shall be.

Categories
Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern North County St. Louis County

What We Can Learn from Jennings

by Michael R. Allen

Internet happenstance led to my discovery of the website for the Jennings Historical Society. Jennings is a small city in north St. Louis County, located not far from the city limits of St. Louis. While Jennings was incorporated in 1946 and saw rapid growth after the opening of Interstate Highway 70, settlement there dates back to 1839. While the Historical Society’s website isn’t deep in content, its presence and wonderful design suggest that there is an effort going to take an interest in the history of one of north county’s most interesting cities.

Jennings was instrumental in the development of the shopping mall in St. Louis. Both Northland Shopping Center in the 1950s and River Roads Mall in 1967 were innovative, albeit auto-centric, development projects that fell into vacancy and disrepair before demolition. Northland fell last year for a new big-box strip, and River Roads is under demolition at the present moment for a new subdivision developed by the Pyramid Companies.

Jennings, however, lives on. While the city faces the same problems as other municpalities in St. Louis County that went from great early suburban development to stangant economies, it could stand to preserve some of its recent past. The suburban development of the 1950s is increasingly the subject of serious research, and its atomic-age modernism seems rather intimately-scaled when compared with suburban development that followed it. Jennings is still the site of 20th century retail, gas station and other commercial buildings that tell the story of the postwar settlement of St. Louis County — as well as older buildings that show the development that the once-rural county supported before highways.

Historic preservation is needed in Jennings as well as other “inner ring” suburbs. The rush to increase revenues may wipe out a lot of interesting places and buildings there. I hope fellow preservationists look at mid-century suburban architecture as seriously as they do early 20th century urban office buildings. Places like Jennings are very important antidotes to development projects like WingHaven that undercut all sense of place and totally condemn the pedestrian. Jennings developed into a car-friendly place that also retained a specific character. Those of us who despise the suburbs can find things to like about these cities — and our involvement can redirect development efforts from replacement sprawl to urban development that builds on local character. A site like that of River Roads would have been a great place for the New Urbanists who are instead building non-places on the remote corn fields of St. Charles County.