Categories
Chicago Demolition Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

In Chicago, Walter Gropius’ Work is Fair Game

by Michael R. Allen

The power plant at Michael Reese Hospital dates to 1953.

Readers know the story: Modern buildings targeted for demolition by powerful interests. Preservationists work to publicize the beauty and reuse potential of modern buildings. Apologists for power claim that modern buildings’ architectural significance is unclear. Back, forth. A few concessions on “major” buildings. Every major preservation voice and even the major newspaper calls for preservation. Then demolition of the “unimportant” buildings begins.

This story is not happening in St. Louis, but in Chicago. The modern buildings are those that comprise the postwar campus of Michael Reese Hospital on the city’s south side. The planner who designed the campus and collaborated on designing eight of the campus buildings is Walter Gropius. (The close proximity of a Gropius-planned campus to a Mies van Der Rohe-planned campus, that of the Illinois Institute of Technology, is unique in North America.) Strange that there would be any confusion over the work of an internationally-renowned modern designer, but in Chicago under the administration of Mayor Richard Daley, such obvious contribution to the worldwide evolution of architecture is no brake on the acts of power. Demolition started yesterday.

Apparently, common sense is also being wrecked, because the original reason for the City of Chicago’s acquisition of the Michael Reese campus was to prepare a residential village for the 2016 Olympic Games. After that bid failed — and many residents of the south side breathed a sigh of relief — the city ramped up the push for demolition with no real development plan. There is vague talk of “mixed use” development, but nothing that compels demolition now other than the absurd conviction that sticking to a senseless plan is righteous. Only two concessions for “major” buildings have been made — one early and one, for Gropius’ Singe Pavilion, last week. Context eludes the ham fists at Chicago City Hall, however.

Landmarks Illinois even offered a preservation compromise that would have targeted some buildings for preservation and allowed others to be wrecked. Daley’s administration had no interest. Never mind that there is a pending National Register of Historic Places nomination for the campus prepared by Grahm Balkany and the Gropius in Chicago Coalition, which will be considered by Illinois state government on December 10. Since no state and federal funds are being used to directly pay the wreckers, there will be no government review of demolition any way.

Showing a better form of conviction than the city of Chicago, the Gropius in Chicago Coalition trudges onward. Although the landscape by Sasaky DeMay and Associates is ruined, and one of the eight Gropius buildings is now lost, there is still something to be spared.

In a move unsurprising to preservationists, the City of Chicago early on decided to spare the main hospital building from 1907 by Schmidt, Garden & Martin from demolition. Widely hailed as a landmark in Chicago’s beloved Prairie School style, the main building would have engendered a preservation war.

However, some perfectly sound pre-Gropius buildings are also threatened, including the one pictured here:

While organized primarily to protect Gropius’ legacy, the Coalition has fought to preserve these buildings too. In fact, I expect Grahm to work until every last part of the complex is torn down. To date, his work has resulted in the sounding of every major Chicago voice on architecture, from the Tribune editorial board to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Midwest Office, in support of preservation. Just this week a letter with impressive signatories went out.

It’s not too late to make a difference. Contact information for Mayor Daley and key city officials is posted here. Raise your voice for internationally significant modern architecture.

Categories
Housing Mid-Century Modern North County St. Louis County

Ranch House Renewal in Ferguson

by Michael R. Allen

Today’s St. Louis Beacon carries an article about the inner-ring St. Louis County suburb of Ferguson’s attempt to revitalize neighborhoods composed largely of small postwar ranch houses. Rosalind Williams, director of planning and development for the city, has plans to save some of these homes by expanding them. From the article by Mary Delach Leonard:

Williams says the plan is to buy the homes and then “right-size” them by adding a bedroom or bathroom to make them more attractive to home buyers. The long-term goal: neighborhood stabilization.

Ferguson has continued its efforts to identify potential historic districts, including neighborhoods of smaller mid-century homes. In today’s economy, those smaller houses might be looking as good as they did fifty years ago.

Categories
Holly Hills National Register South St. Louis

Grand-Bates Historic District Listed; More to Come

by Michael R. Allen

On September 16, the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places listed the Grand-Bates Suburb Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places. The district encompasses the residential area roughly bounded by Grand Avenue on the west, Bates Avenue on the north, I-55 on the east and Iron Street on the south. the nomination was written by Andrew Weil, Research Associate for Landmarks Association of St. Louis and funded through the work of Alderman Matt Villa (D-11th).

Missing from the nomination is an area between Iron and Carondelet Park that could not be included due to the architectural gulf between it and the more consistent part of the district. Thus, landmarks like the Corinthian Baptist Church on Idaho Avenue (anchor of Carondelet’s historic African-American enclave), First District Police Station and the Seventh Church of Christ Scientist on Holly Hills Boulevard, the Southern Funeral Home on Grand Boulevard — all eligible for listing as single sites or as part of another district — are not covered. Hopefully they will get listed as well.

Categories
Abandonment Art Events North St. Louis Northside Regeneration

Matta-Clark in St. Louis: Welcome to the Desert of the Real

by Michael R. Allen

This Friday, October 30, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (3716 Washington) opens Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark from 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. Matta-Clark (1943-1978) trained as an architect but ended up as an artist working architecturally. That is, Matta-Clark took to buildings to create his art. Literally. Matta-Clark cut sections of buildings, cut pieces out of and into buildings and rearranged and played with existing architecture. Out of his brutal dissection emerged works that raise more questions about the contemporary urban condition than can ever be answered.


The Pulitzer’s press release contains an evocative quote from the artist, who said that his work engaged buildings “for these comprise both a miniature cultural evolution and a model of prevailing social structures. Consequently, what I do to buildings is what some do with languages and others with groups of people: I organize them in order to explain and defend the need for change.” Matta-Clark’s buildings were slated for demolition and already deemed trash to the modern capitalist economy. From their doomed bodies, Matta-Clark raised out “hope and fantasy” that challenged perceptions of the firmness and commodity of the built form.

Matta-Clark worked in the early 1970s when urban renewal’s bulldozer binge was at its peak. In this time, famously, salvager Richard Nickel in 1972 met his death saving intact pieces of Louis Sullivan’s Stock Exchange Building in Chicago. Matta-Clark’s death only six years later was due to cancer, but there is some mystic coincidence in the untimely deaths of the artifact-seeker and the playfully artistic vivisectionist. Both met the same fate as so many of their subjects did, in the period where American cities lost more historic architecture than ever before or since.

The arrival of the work of Matta-Clark in St. Louis in 2009 evokes another coincidence: the arrival of the exhibition at a great moment in the historic redevelopment of north St. Louis, when Paul J. McKee Jr. is attempting to reinvent urban renewal as a private-side endeavor, with his own company leading and government following. The old model is inverted, but historic architecture — and the social relationships its endurance enables — is as much at risk as it was when Matta-Clark was at over work thirty years ago. The image that I share above is not the result of McKee’s ongoing effort, but it could be. The NorthSide project has created more cut-through buildings than Matta-Clark made, or Nickel ever entered, through the dollars-and-cents underground economy of brick theft.

In the past two years, St. Louisans have seen — or, perhaps more commonly, seen images of — buildings gruesomely reinvented at the hands of people needing quick money to pay a bill or get a fix. The horror is unimaginable for those who live around the shells that haunt north city. Can the aesthetic counterpart found in Matta-Clark’s work draw from this region’s citizens a meaningful discussion on the future of our own historic architecture? Matta-Clark’s work has the power to provoke, inspire and motivate us to move from our own complacent disregard for the inner city. May we not sublimate what is lived as a crisis.

Categories
Best Practices Historic Preservation Media

Preservation and Online Media

by Michael R. Allen

Preservation Ohio, the statewide advocacy organization serving the Buckeye State, is the most-followed state preservation group on Twitter. I have been following Preservation Ohio’s media efforts for the past month, and am amazed at the innovation in and consistency of its efforts. In fact, on Friday, October 23, Preservation Ohio hosted a live blog on “Preservation and Social Media.” Hopefully other Midwestern preservation groups tuned in for some much-needed training.

According to the organization’s website, the premise was simple and familiar to preservationists across the country: “Ohio’s preservation community suffers from a lack of cohesion and from multiple groups working in ways that waste resources and produce a disjointed message.”

Here’s what Preservation Ohio has done to combat that problem in the past year:

* Launched The Ohio Preservation Network, America’s first social network designed exclusively for statewide preservation and revitalization. Through the site, Ohioans can now easily share preservation news, stories, events, opportunities and enthusiasm, and gain access to key resources.
* Forged new ground in the use of online social networking to build a strong, cohesive community for preservation, and to provide public relations opportunities for our members and affiliate communities.
* Hosted the most-followed organizational Twitter page of any statewide preservation organization in the country. Each month, our stories and links are now re-posted, and our stories are clicked, over 1,000 times. We continue to build a strong presence on Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube and other forms of social media.
* We continue to publish America’s first and oldest self-authored statewide preservation blog, MyHometownOhio, which celebrated its third anniversary this summer.
* Worked with statewide and regional preservation organizations in other parts of the country to share best practices and tips on social media.
* Hosted National Preservation Conference Twitter Central, the only location online for access to all Twitter entries from the 2009 Nashville Conference, including photos and videos.

While most of effective preservation advocacy happens offline, and some constituents are missed by social media, Preservation Ohio’s work demonstrates a welcome openness. Meeting people where they are is key to successful preservation outreach, and online media are key to meeting a wide spectrum of the public, especially younger people often under-engaged by preservation groups. Alongside traditional outreach, Preservation Ohio’s online media strategy has made it into the most visible Midwestern preservation organization. Will others follow?

Categories
Preservation Board Soulard South St. Louis

Cultural Resources Office Stands Up for House in Soulard

by Michael R. Allen

The city’s Cultural Resource Office (CRO) has published the final agenda for Monday’s Preservation Board meeting. CRO recommends that the Board uphold denial of the house at 1925-27 S. 10th Street in Soulard. The report clears up any doubt that Rehab Girls LLC is tied to developer Pete Rothschild. This action is inconsistent with Rothschild’s lauded track record on preservation.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Board of Aldermen Urban Assets LLC

On Public Record McKee Denies Connection to Urban Assets

by Michael R. Allen

Douglas Duckworth posted this video that he took at yesterday’s aldermanic Housing, Urban Development and Zoning committee meeting. Toward the end of questioning by Alderman Antonio French (D-21st), Paul J. McKee Jr. — on public record — denies any intention to purchase land outside of the NorthSide project area and any involvement in land-grabbing shell company Urban Assets LLC.


Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration People

Future, Past: Meet the Present

by Michael R. Allen

With tomorrow’s aldermanic hearing on the NorthSide bills, I think back to September 23. This was the date of the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Commission’s meeting in which that body unanimously approved the TIF for the first two phases of the NorthSide project. I think of that meeting as the “Night of Dichotomy” because just a few block away at Left Bank Books’ downtown store was another gathering: a panel discussion sponsored by Next American City called Urbanexus.

I missed most of the Urbanexus panel unsuccessfully trying to get a seat at the TIF Commission, but I know that the panel featured some of our town’s best and brightest minds, including moderator Chris King, editorial director for the St. Louis American, Alderman Antonio French (D-21st) and Cherokee Street gadabout Galen Gondolfi. The crowd was as interesting as the panel. The store was jam-packed, with many faces that I had never seen before. Something magical is afoot when the Jeremiah, the Amish hobo of the north riverfront, is one of the most familiar faces in sight!

I don’t really recall much from the panel discussion, save Antonio French’s rousing call to change the city’s zoning code. What I can’t stop thinking about was how there was this ideas-focused, future-oriented convergence taking place at the same time and in the same radius as a public meting fraught with the predictable tensions and turmoil of the city’s past sixty years. The old scene was mired in age-old divisions and rife with anger, while the new scene was full of ideas but a little disconnected from the harsh reality of civic heavy-lifting.

I was able to plug into the Urbanexus events earlier in the day. My day started with a driving tour of the city that I led with Jeff and Randy Vines. In attendance were Diana Lind and Pooja Shah of Next American City, Sarah Szurpicki of the Great Lakes Urban Exchange, Sharon Carney from the Michigan Suburbs Alliance and Payton Chung of Chicago. The tour was a mad dash starting downtown and winding through everywhere from Old North to Clayton.

Steven Smith, Pooja Shah, Diana Lind, Sharon Carney and Jeff Vines discuss St. Louis at The Royale.

The tour was a hit! Our out of town guests loved the city and its neighborhoods. One comment that came up again and again was how the city neighborhoods have strong identities and how even the most distressed areas retain street life and commercial cores. The tour-goers were very impressed by the north side, which they had read about in relation to the NorthSide project. No one saw the wasteland they had suspected might be there. In fact, the Detroit contingent was a little jealous!

Sarah Szurpicki and the Vines brothers outside of Urban Eats in Dutchtown.

After the tour, there was a lunch meeting called the Vanguard Regional Roundup. Next American City has kindly posted a recap here. That meeting was held at Urban Eats in Dutchtown, the brainchild of John Chen and Caya Aufiero. I left in a mood unwilling to deal with the TIF Commission hearing later that day. We had a great discussion about St. Louis that included not only some usual-suspects locals but people from Chicago, Philadelphia, Asheville and Detroit — and it was refreshing, insightful, realistic and productive. Then it was back to work. However, work imbued with such deliberation and connection to the outside world felt a little more purposeful.

You know that future we are all talking about? We’re building it now.

Categories
North St. Louis Northside Regeneration St. Louis Board of Aldermen

Aldermanic Hearing on NorthSide Project Tomorrow

by Michael R. Allen

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on the two board bills — 218 and 219 — that would enact a redevelopment agreement for the McEagle NorthSide project and allocate Tax increment financing to the project’s first two phases.

The meeting will take place at 10:00 a.m. in the Kennedy Room, formerly the City Council chamber when the city had a bicameral legislature (Room 208).

Word is buzzing about lawsuits against the project and a recall effort against Alderwoman April Ford-Griffin (D-5th), but the legislation that will give McEagle development power marches along. Does the haste to pass the bill and the fervor to kill it create a situation where smart changes will have little political support? No doubt that McEagle has the votes it needs to pass these ordinances as they have been introduced. The only part of the deal that would probably fail at the Board is public guarantee of the TIF, and that proposal has not been introduced as a bill. Many aldermen have stated total opposition to public guarantee but support for the project itself with the TIF currently proposed.

Thus, there is only a small amount of time in which real changes to these bills can be crafted and proposed. Let’s get those changes on the table quickly. What should they be? Post them here and bring them tomorrow morning.

Categories
Historic Preservation

Government Officials and Preservation Action

by Michael R. Allen

Preservationists are pretty used to lobbying government officials. Yet sometimes those officials are the ones doing the lobbying. That’s what attendees saw at the October 16 membership meeting of Preservation Action, held during the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s conference in Nashville.

One of the first speakers was Brian Goeken, who is Deputy Commissioner in the Department of Planning and Development for Chicago. Then there was a rousing talk by Joel Burns, a City Council member in Forth Worth who spoke about how vital smart federal historic preservation laws are to local redevelopment efforts.

Rounding out the meeting were short presentations by Anna Glover, Preservation Planner for San Antonio, and Shannon Wasielewski, the Historic Preservation Officer for that city. Glover is helping boost Preservation Action’s efforts to sign up coordinators in each state who will ensure that federal elected officials hear from their constituents on preservation policy. Glover also serves on the board of directors of Preservation Texas, that state’s non-profit statewide advocacy organization. Wasielewski serves as Preservation Action’s Vice Chair for Finance and Administration.

While Preservation Action limits its lobbying to federal policy, preventing these officials from conflicts with their local city governments, their involvement is still laudable. City Council members should have a lot to say about federal policies that affect their own policy-making, and appointed officials should share their knowledge of best policy practices — and push for changes when needed.