Categories
Clearance McRee Town South St. Louis

The Destruction of McRee Town: May 2005

by Michael R. Allen

By May, only a handful of buildings remained in the clearance area. These were the buildings whose owners had held out to appeal the prices set through condemnation hearings or buildings whose tenants insisted on remaining until their leases were up. On the 4000 block of Lafayette, 4035 and 4037 remained occupied throughout May while 4055 and 4057 had recently emptied and were under demolition. 4037 Lafayette looked like it had been renovated in the recent past; its demolition seemed totally pointless. As of January 2006, the four-flat building at 4035 still stands.

4035 & 4037 Lafayette Avenue

4055 & 4057 Lafayette Avenue
Categories
Urbanism

Smart Growth?

On the H-URBAN discussion list, Alexander Schulenburg mentions “a Proclamation entitled ‘Prohibiting New Building or Subdividing of Houses’, which was issued on 7 July 1580 (22 Elizabeth I) commanded people to ‘desist and forbear from any new buildings of any house or tenement within three miles from any gates of the said city of London […] where no former house hath been known to have been in the memory of such as are now living.'”

Categories
Fire South St. Louis Southwest Garden

Lecoutour Brothers Stair Manufacturing Company

by Michael R. Allen

This building once housed the operations of the Lecoutour Brothers Stair Manufacturing Company. According to a website on the historic McFaddin-Ward House in Beaumont, Texas: “Unlike mail-order companies such as Sears and Montgomery Ward, the Lecoutour Brothers firm specialized in custom-made or ‘odd work,’ as they termed it for their clients.”

In recent years, the building was used by the adjacent Sterling Lacquer Manufacturing Company. The building burned in a spectacular blaze in early May 2005.

Other photographs

  • Burnt factory: Photos by Toby Weiss
  • Photos by Nick Findley
    • Categories
    Events

    Film: "Confluence: The River Heritage of St. Louis"

    From the events listing in the newest issue of The Commonspace:

    Thursday, May 19
    Film: “Confluence: The River Heritage of St. Louis”
    Missouri History Museum, Lindell & DeBaliviere in Forest Park
    Free, all ages, 7 p.m., 314-454-3150, www.mohistory.org

    Documentarian James F. Scott has made a film exploring our city’s relationship and development with regard to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers (remember them? Yeah, we really are built along rivers, even if we don’t act like it). Big-time Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Lambrecht, author of a new book on a similar theme, will be one of the panelists sticking around after the film to continue the discussion on the relevance of rivers to today’s civic and cultural life in St. Louis.

    Categories
    Infrastructure South St. Louis St. Louis Board of Aldermen Streets

    Blocking Streets in Gravois Park?

    Alderman Craig Schmid of the 20th Ward sent the following e-mail to the Gravois Park listserv outlining proposed changes to the street grid in that area of the city. These changes are the tired and ineffective methods of blocking streets and turning others one-way. In Forest Park Southeast, barriers and one-way streets have created fertile pockets for criminal activity and abandonment — check out the 4400 blocks of Swan, Norfolk and Vista to see what effect barriers have on a neighborhood. We’re fighting to get ours removed!

    Feel free to give Alderman Schmid your two cents. He’s the only south side alderperson who seems to have genuine progressive inclinations, and usually is reasonable. He may be persuaded.

    From: “craig schmid”
    Subject: [gravoispark] Proposed barricades and one-way streets to keep non-resident criminals out of area.
    Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 23:13:28 -0500

    > Greetings:
    >
    > The police major for the South Patrol Division has compiled
    > statistics to show that 2/3 of the folks arrested in our area come
    > from outside of the neighborhoods. Therefore, he is committed to
    > working with the City and neighborhoods to install barricades and
    > one-way streets to deal with the easy accessibility of our
    > neighborhoods to criminals. These are just proposals (which are in a
    > number of wards), but the intent would be to try to put them in place
    > by June. Let me know what you think.
    >
    > BARRICADES:
    > Texas south of Arsenal; Juniata east of Minnesota; Nebraska
    > north of Juniata; Ohio south of Arsenal; Pennsylvania south of
    > Wyoming; Winnebago west of Jefferson; California north of alley to the
    > north of Chippewa; Osage west of Broadway; Ohio south of Gasconade;
    > Compton between Osage and Gasconade [Marquette Park].
    >
    > ONE-WAYS:
    > Change 36xx Iowa to one-way north (was south); Meramec from
    > Broadway to California one-way west; Osage from Virginia to Louisiana
    > one-way west; Osage from Virginia to Compton one-way east; Miami from
    > Arkansas to Grand one-way west; Osage from Tennessee to Louisiana
    > one-way east (neighbor suggests one way west); Osage from Virginia to
    > Louisiana one-way west (neighbor suggests one way east from Louisiana
    > to Compton); Louisiana 34xx block one-way north (neighbor sugggests
    > leaving two-way); 35xx Pennsylvania one-way north (was south); 36xx
    > Iowa one-way north (was south); Jefferson one way east from Texas to
    > Jefferson.
    >
    > Thanks.
    > Craig
    >

    Categories
    Century Building Demolition Downtown Historic Preservation

    Architectural Record Coverage of the Century Building Demolition

    The Architectural Record covers the controversy:

    “Critics Say National Trust Helped Doom Renowned St. Louis Building”

    Categories
    East St. Louis, Illinois

    East St. Louis, Illinois: “Hog Capital of the Nation”

    by Thomas Petraitis

    In the 1960’s, a large sign surrounded by a landscaped park welcomed visitors to East St. Louis and proudly proclaimed the city to be the “Hog Capital of the Nation”. Today, academics and historians are trying to justify the immense decay of this city by blaming the factories and packinghouses that closed over 40 years ago for the problems of the city today. They look at ruins like the Armour Packing Plant in National City and see only death and despair in places that were actually triumphs of the human spirit.

    It is no great societal conspiracy when a building is left to decay: The owners and inhabitants just didn’t want to be there any more, so they left. But an abandoned building is defenseless. Anyone can make up stories about it, usually to create a myth justifying the abandonment. We pretend that any abandonment has some sinister, explainable cause because we want to believe that our own new happy buildings, filled as they are with our own dreams and emotions, will last forever. We don’t want our buildings to become obsolete because that may mean that we can become obsolete.

    Nowhere is the idea of a building more important than in the buildings that comprised the stockyards and packinghouses of National City (and Chicago). When you look at these ruins, you are looking at ideas and innovation that live on in virtually every manufacturing facility around the globe. What happened there changed the face of America. The East St. Louis workers who struggled mightily to better themselves amidst the difficult and dangerous working conditions were not victims. They were proud participants in an extraordinary American drama.

    Continue reading “East St. Louis, Illinois: “Hog Capital of the Nation””
    Categories
    Media Theft

    The Case of the Stained Glass Bandit — And His Patrons

    by Michael R. Allen

    In the latest Riverfront Times comes this article: The Case of the Stained Glass Bandit by Kristen Hinman. Hinman does a good job of reporting on the story, and talked with the right people. Yet the fact that she doesn’t mention which dealers bought the stolen windows is distressing. The captured thief surely divulged his patrons’ names, and that would be available publicly.

    The article seems to imply that this thief is more responsible for the rash of stolen windows than the unscrupulous dealers who fuel the thievery by fencing stolen goods. Ten guys will step in to fill Tanter’s place — and the dealers will buy from them, too, so long as out-of-town buyers can be had…

    Categories
    Demolition Housing North St. Louis O'Fallon

    Florissant Center Apartments

    by Michael R. Allen

    The sturdy 36-unit Florissant Center Apartments are undergoing demolition, to be replaced by new construction. The demolition is representative of a larger planning hostility toward large-scale unsubsidized multi-unit apartment buildings. The city government is discouraging the renovation of apartment buildings for apartment use, favoring either conversion into upscale, larger condominium-style units or outright demolition and replacement with new construction. The only sort of multi-unit apartment building that city planners seem to favor is the federally-subsidized, income-restricted sort. While income-restricted apartment buildings are certainly needed, market-rate apartment housing is equally needed by thousands of people. There are many people who cannot qualify for mortgages, or who would rather not own property, whose presence in the city is beneficial. Students, young couples, elderly people, disabled people and others who may prefer apartment living aren’t the undesirable folks city planners make them out to be nowadays. Renters bring energy to a neighborhood.

    The planners’ disdain for rental housing, though, stems less from a hatred of renters than from a tendency to not question the profit-drive desires of developers who can make more money from selling larger living spaces than from rental units — without having to stick around and maintain the buildings they renovate or build. Developing and maintaining quality apartment housing requires patience and commitment, values many developers don’t have — or won’t allow themselves in their rush to make money.

    The trend to destroy apartment buildings is short-sighted, of course. Apartment housing usually is more dense than what replaces it, and thus makes for more street life and greater population. A city as desperately in need of increasing its population as St. Louis will kill itself if it does anything but increase the number of new apartment units (along with numbers of other kinds of units, of course). Planners who view apartments as obstacles to big projects and big sales are hurting St. Louis.

    The Florissant Center Apartments are better-built than whatever will replace them. Dating from the late 1910’s, the building exemplifies the best tendencies in simple Craftsman stock design, with ample fenestration and restrained ornament. (I am pleased to mention that Larry Giles salvaged nearly all of the ornamental terra cotta from the building.) The interior courtyard affords some privacy for tenants as they enter and exit the building but also encourages interaction among them in what is a transitional space between public and private. The materials used are among the best from that time: birch wood, solid Hydraulic-Press-Brick face-brick and stock terra cotta ornament of local design. Even in the early stage of demolition, the building is sound enough to rescue. The still-level floors that we saw inside indicate that the structure could have stood at least another 100 years. The location across the street from O’Fallon Park is simply lovely.

    Categories
    Demolition Downtown

    Lost: Herkert & Meisel Building

    by Michael R. Allen

    The building in 1977. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive.

    The stately Herkert & Meisel Building (originally built by the Semple, Birge & Company Company as a warehouse) was built in 1874 and is depicted in Compton and Dry’s noted 1875 Pictorial St. Louis. In the last two decades of its life, the building stood as the only documented building depicted on the atlas standing in the downtown commercial core save the nearby Old Post Office and the Old Courthouse. (A small storefront building at Locust and 10th streets may date to the 1860’s.) The building stood as a remnant of St. Louis’s 19th-century wide use of the Italianate style for commercial architecture, a trend that was dwindling even by the time of this building’s construction. As such, it was an exceptional building in the downtown core that deserved careful preservation. However, exceptional commercial buildings have not fared well downtown.

    The building’s most well-known use was as headquarters and factory for the Herkert & Meisel Trunk Company, a luggage company that used the building for almost 80 years until its demolition.  The bay window had been added to the building, but largely it was in original condition.


    Rear elevation, July 1998. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis Archive

    The demolition of the Herkert & Meisel Building drew little protest. In fact, many of the proponents of demolition were purported preservationists working for the development company HRI, which sought demolition of the building for construction of a parking garage and ballroom building to serve the historic Statler and Lenox hotels that the company was renovating. Once again, the false ideal of “progress” won out, and the building was sacrified for preservation of supposedly more significant buildings nearby. What an odd foreshadowing of the demolition of the Century Building three years later, except this time the later building died and the building depicted on Pictorial St. Louis was the avowed cause of death.