Categories
Collapse Historic Preservation South St. Louis Tower Grove East

Holding Down the Corner

by Michael R. Allen

Perhaps the most precious architectural resources in our neighborhoods are corner buildings. When the ends of a block are vacant, a street’s urban character takes a huge hit. Empty corners signify distress and disuse. Corner buildings in full use show the world the lifeblood of an urban area, and in vacancy at least carry the promise of renewal to come. If the corner building is commercial the potential is particularly rich: there could be a place of commerce, a generator of city revenues and a point of presence that dampens crime.

To cut to the chase, I have been concerned about the corner commercial building at the northeast corner of Michigan and Arsenal streets for some time now. The building, which dates to 1905, has lost some of its character through relaying of the upper part.  Consequently it is a bit plain, but still sturdy, well-built and suited for a corner store. When I first moved to Tower Grove East last year, the building was already vacant. City records show that the building has been listed as vacant since 2008. Not good.

Then, this summer, the outer wythe of brick on the first floor collapsed.  On July 26, the Building Division condemned the building for demolition.  The only action taken then by owner, Yee Real Estate LLC of Chesterfield, was to prop up the remaining part of the wythe with lumber.  Again, not good.  Tower Grove East is a great neighborhood because it has lost so few buildings, and has few empty corners.  That should not change.

Some relief came this week when Yee Real Estate LLC applied for a building permit on December 29 for stabilization work to rebuild the collapsed masonry.  Hopefully the job is done well and soon, and the building is put back to use.


Attention developers: Just across the street at to the east, the residential building at 3114-16 Arsenal Street remains vacant and for sale. Built in two sections, the building has a dentillated brick cornice and, on the east, flat stone lintels.  These are signs that this building precedes much of the surrounding city fabric.  Indeed the eastern half of the building appears to be a building seen in Compton and Dry’s 1875 Pictorial St. Louis.

Nearby Grant School at 3009 Pennsylvania Avenue would not be completed until 1893.

Categories
Art

Seeing St. Louis in the Work of Joe Jones

by Michael R. Allen

Joe Jones' mural "Riverfront" was displayed in the 905 Liquor Store at 8th and Market streets. Photograph from the Preservation Research Office Collection.

Today the St. Louis Beacon kindly published my commentary, “Seeing St. Louis in the work of Joe Jones”. Give it a read, and then get to the St. Louis Art Museum’s exhibit “Joe Jones: Painter of the American Scene” before it ends on January 2.

Categories
PRO Collection South St. Louis Tower Grove East

Snow Day on Gravois, c. 1960

Photograph from the Preservation Research Office Collection.

This photograph dates to around 1960 and shows a woman walking north on the west side of snow-covered Gravois Boulevard just north of Cherokee Street. In the background, faintly, the neon-lit blade sign of F.W. Clemens Supply Company can be seen — a sign that remains to this day. Clemens still sells bulk materials like mortar, cement, gravel, minus and sand to contractors and enterprising individuals.

Categories
Demolition Downtown PRO Collection

Live Better Electrically

by Michael R. Allen

One of the photographs in our recent acquisition of over 200 amateur photographs of St. Louis shows the Union Electric Building at 315 N. 12th Street (now Tucker Boulevard) decked out with holiday decorations. The photograph is undated but comes from the middle or later 1950s. There was plenty to see the rest of the year

In the 1950s, Union Electric’s headquarters was decorated year-round with an impressive neon-tube sign mounted on a rooftop structure. By 1953, Union Electric had purchased the adjacent St. Louis Star-Times building to the south. The image above comes from the Summer 1953 issue of Union Electric Quarterly and shows the sign atop the Star-Times building.

Both the St. Louis Star-Times and Union Electric buildings were demolished in the early 1980s and the site (on the same block as Christ Church Cathedral) is now occupied by a tiny U.S. Bank branch building and more asphalt. There are no illuminated holiday decorations, no neon signs and no sign that great buildings ever occupied the site.

Categories
Historic Preservation People

Welcome, New Cultural Resources Office Director Betsy Bradley

by Michael R. Allen

At the start of the new year, we will have a strong new ally for historic preservation in St. Louis: incoming Cultural Resources Office Director Betsy Bradley. Betsy comes to St. Louis from the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, but her urban credentials include seven years as a staffer to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Most importantly, Betsy gives the city a professional with extensive experience in cultural resources management, education and even publication. I have no doubt that Betsy will be a shot in the arm for city preservation efforts.

While not a native, Betsy already has some roots here: her husband is Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Superintendent Tom Bradley.  I have had the chance to get to know Betsy in the last year and know her to be calm, thoughtful and inquisitive.  Of course I was ecstatic when I learned that the Planning and Urban Design Agency chose Betsy for the Cultural Resources Office directorship.  (That job most recently was held by the unflappable Kate Shea from 1989 through this July.)

A key strength that Betsy brings is having been a member of citizen preservation review boards like our Preservation Board. Betsy has served on the commissions in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Taylors Falls, Minnesota. She understands the deliberative aspect to CRO’s decision making, often the source of conflict. Furthermore, Betsy has connected her cultural resources work to academic communities through teaching. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at Baltimore’s Goucher College, which offers a renowned distance-learning master’s degree in historic preservation. Formerly, Betsy taught at the University of St. Thomas, Ursuline College and Youngstown State University. Betsy will be able to connect work in St. Louis to a larger community of cultural resources professionals and aspiring professionals.

In addition to her impressive resume of service, Betsy is the author of The Works: The Industrial Architecture of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1999). Preservation of industrial resources is a big and unresolved challenge in St. Louis and its Rust Belt brethren, so we should be pleased that our city’s top cultural resources officer has done extensive study of the issue.

Betsy Bradley starts in January. Fellow preservationists, a lot of good lies ahead.

Categories
Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

Modern STL Publishes First Self-Guided Modern Architecture Tour

by Michael R. Allen

Only a few months young, Modern STL has already hit the ground running to identify and promote the region’s modern architecture. Today Modern STL published its first self-guided architectural tour, encompassing Kirkwood, Crestwood, Oakland and Glendale in southwest St. Louis County. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kraus House to a grouping of Harris Armstrong-designed homes to several notable post-war subdivisions, the area is rich with mid-century heritage.

The tour is available both as a Google Map and as a two-page PDF for easy printing. Both are available here. Modern STL will be publishing other self-guided tours in the future. Any suggestions?

Categories
Benton Park West Cherokee Street Gravois Park PRO Collection South St. Louis

1950s Parade Scene, Cherokee at Compton

by Michael R. Allen

In November, we acquired a collection of 209 black and white amateur photographs taken in and around St. Louis between 1930 and 1980. Most of the photographs are from the 1950s and a large number feature parade scenes. Today we post two taken by the same photographer on the same date showing the intersection of Cherokee and Compton streets in south St. Louis.

A parade heading west on Cherokee Street near Compton Avenue in the 1950s. Photographs from the Preservation Research Office Collection.
The same view today.

The view in the first photograph shows the north side of the 3100 block of Cherokee Street toward the west end.  At right are the buildings now housing Tower Tacos (3149 Cherokee) and Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts (3151).  At left is the larger corner building where Peridot and the StyleHouse, housing clothing purveyors and St. Louis patriots STL Style and Lighthouse Design.  Kuhn Upholstering Company is long gone.  The Fort Gondo and Tower Taco buildings have lost their shaped front parapets.  Overall, however, the view remains remarkably the same.

The parade turned south onto Compton Avenue from Cherokee Street.
The same view today.

The second view looks north on Compton Avenue. Again, little has changed in the fifty-odd years since the parade passed by — just the removal of awnings. Even parades still pass by on Cherokee Street, at least around every Cinco de Mayo.

Categories
Midtown Streets

Vandeventer, Your Granite is Showing

by Michael R. Allen

While heading north on Vandeventer Avenue today we spotted an open cut just south of Lindell Boulevard, in which workers were repairing pipes. The cross-section of street looked like this:

One can easily see a layer of red Missouri granite paving blocks under the asphalt. Granite paving like this came into use in St. Louis during the early 1880s.  Peter Vandeventer opened the Vandeventer Place addition in 1870, and the street was laid out then from Cass Avenue on the north to Lindell Boulevard on the south.  The southern extension between Lindell Boulevard and Old Manchester Road (now also called Vandeventer) is shown on Pitzman’s 1878 atlas of St. Louis County and City.

Vandeventer likely was unpaved at the start, so the granite blocks may be the street’s original paving.  Judging from what is evident today, they are likely intact and buried directly under the asphalt.  We are never very far from our roots, are we?

Categories
Brick Theft North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Place

Where Stolen Bricks Go

by Michael R. Allen

On December 7th, a resident of the Old North neighborhood caught a man stealing bricks from a stack in front of her house. When she asked him to put them back, instead of complying he hurried into his maroon Jeep Cherokee and drove off.

Police did not have a hard time finding the thief. After the resident called in the crime, officers headed to Unlimited Bricks at 2600 University Avenue where, as if following the directions of a brick rustling script, the thief’s vehicle was parked. The man was selling bricks to the yard, owned by Charles Rosene. After the victim identified the man, he was arrested and taken into custody.

Readers may wonder how Unlimited Bricks was still in business after the Board of Adjustment revoked its occupancy permit on November 17. (A lot of the credit for this action goes to the tireless effort of Fifth Ward Neighborhood Stabilization Officer Kathryn Woodard, supported by Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin.) While the business had a legal time to appeal that ruling, it had to obey the revocation order pending appeal. Unlimited Bricks — a business that is not incorporated in this state — truly was an outlaw operation when it nearly fenced some stolen front yard bricks. No more.

Map of the area around Unlimited Bricks, which is marked by a yellow cross.

Thanks to the Old North resident’s complaint, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police worked quickly to get the Building Division to condemn the property for occupancy on December 8. Rosene has had an active occupancy permit since July 1, 2005. Noncompliance with the revoked occupancy permit will land Rosene with fines of $500 per incident, so if you are in the area please check on 2600 University and see if the yard is running. If it is, call the police. They will know the operation all too well.

Those who are not familiar with the corner of University and North Jefferson, shown in the aerial photograph above, can be excused. The vicinity of the yard is a waste land of wrecker’s yards and unlicensed dumps. Looking at a summer-shot aerial photograph, one can see how accurate the term “brownfield” is in describing certain conditions of battered urban landscape. This is the vortex where near north bricks go for fencing out of the neighborhood. This area is very much like a black hole that consumes area building stock and churns out cash to a handful of harvesters, again and again until there is no more possible destruction.

To the south and southeast of the Rosene property are lots owned by the Hemphill wrecking family. Around those are still more half-used lots. Typically, these lots have tall chain link fencing — often missing in sections — and haphazard gravel paving. The lots have many scrub trees around the fence lines, so that in the summer they are almost forested. In the middle will be some wrecking equipment, salvaged materials or random items.

View north from St. Louis Avenue across the abyss of wrecking yards.

On the south side of St. Louis Avenue on the east side of Elliott Avenue is a grimly comic landscape of a tall slope of of dirt, dumped from wrecking jobs, on a lot so unkempt one wonders how it can possess any legal occupancy permit. Not all of the yards in the area are so unsightly, and wreckers who hold licenses do honest labor for money. Yet the conglomeration of messy yards around St. Louis Avenue and Jefferson, just northwest of the old Pruitt-Igoe site, are a black eye for the north side.

One is not surprised that the Northside Regeneration plan takes aim at this swath of blight.  Yet the fact is that it does not take $8 billion plans to shut down illegal brick yards and clean up vacant lots. Citizen action, not the weight of promised redevelopment, has shut down Unlimited Bricks. What else can it do?

The building at 2629 St. Louis Avenue, owned by Northside Regeneration LLC.

One of the few remaining buildings in the wrecking wasteland is the handsome 19th century commercial building at the northeast corner of St. Louis and Elliott Avenues, owned by Paul J. McKee Jr.’s companies for years now. Its strong form is a vigilant reminder that the dead center can also be a land of urban life, where bricks build community rather than petty fortunes.

Categories
South St. Louis Tower Grove East

Red Brick and Snow

Goodness, does a snowfall bring out the saturated red of St. Louis brick!