Repurposed in 2005

Although the number of buildings that we tracked that fell was high in 2005, the number of buildings we tracked that entered into renovation is encouraging. It includes some large and long-vacant buildings that we assumed would sit that way for awhile. All are in St. Louis.

- Edden Publishing Company Building
- Franklin School
- Grant School
- McKinley Bridge
- Neighborhood Gardens Apartments
- Smith Academy & Manual Training School

Lost in 2005

Another year, another round of demolitions.

Here are some of the losses that we tracked this year (links go to documentation that we and others have published). While we are more vigilant than many people with depressing tracking of building deaths, our work omits many lesser known buildings and houses that fell in 2005 far from our eyes.

ST. LOUIS
- Busch Stadium
- Century Building
- Crunden Branch Library
- 4470-78 Delmar Boulevard
- Dummitt's Confectionary
- Florissant Center Apartments
- Lecoutour Brothers Stair Manufacturing Company
- Houses at Loughborough and Grand
- 914 Madison Street
- McRee Town
- Northland Shopping Center
- Our Lady of Sorrows Convent
- 2013-15 and 2021-23 Palm Avenue
- Peerless Restaurant Supply Building
- St. Louis Bus Maintenance Center
- Starlight Missionary Baptist Church
- Harry S. Truman Restorative Center
- Walter Freund Bread Company

EAST ST. LOUIS
- French Village Drive-In

CHICAGO
- Lakeside Motel

Long live these buildings.

Hey, kid....

This morning, I heard a knock on the door. I rushed over to open it, knowing that it was yet another roofing contractor showing up to give us a bid. When I opened the door, a man was there with a roofing truck.

He said, "Hi. Are your parents home?"

I answered, "This is my house."

"Oh. Well let me go shut off the truck."

I was a little sour at first, but since many folks I know informed me at my recent birthday that they didn't know I was "so young," I guess it's nice to have someone make a mistake in the opposite direction to balance things out.

More importantly, I'm excited that St. Louis still has reasonable enough real estate prices that I can own a house at this age, let alone a fairly large (if dilapidated) 120 year old house. That's a lot of why I was so eager to move back here. Had we stayed in Chicago, we wouldn't have been able to own a building (let alone a fairly intact historic one in a neighborhood of our choice) for decades. With the real estate prices in Chicago, there is no way that anyone would have ever mistakenly thought me too young to be the owner of the building, cos I would definitely not look like a kid anymore by the time I could afford to buy property up there.

Come to think of it, this particular contractor lives in the county, likely in an area where young people cannot afford to own property, either. Maybe he should think about moving to the city. Then again, his advice for dealing with the parapet walls (which need to have all their bricks relaid) of our historic house was to suggest simply knocking the things down and not replacing them. Maybe he should not think about moving to the city....

Either way, I'm happy to be here!

52nd City Online Magazine Launch

Don't be a sap and go out of town this weekend. Get on down to this cool event:

Friday, December 30 --52nd City Online Magazine Launch

52nd City Media celebrates its preview online issue at Gallery Urbis with a launch party on Friday, December 30th from 7-9pm. Check out new fiction, poetry, essays, and photography on the 52nd City website from contributors Andrea Avery, Aaron Belz, Thomas Crone, Thom Fletcher, Chris King, Michaela McGinn, Thomas R. Raber, Tony Robinson, Stefene Russell, Julia Smillie, Mike Steinberg, Mary Kaye Tonnies, and Brett Underwood.

Also on tap...Eric Hall (Grandpa's Ghost, Massamalgam) and Jason Hutto (Phonocaptors, Sexicolor) present live improvisation using multiple instruments and electronics to build textural soundscapes to accompany the video works of Van McElwee. Stefene Russell reads poetry to the jazz improv of Dave Stone. $5 donation at the door. Plenty of food, drinks, and merriment.

Gallery Urbis Orbis is located at 419 N. 10th Street, St. Louis, MO 63101 (well for a couple more days anyway)

Driver's Ed 101

by Bridget Frischer


Dear drivers in Brentwood,

As a resident of the neighborhood you only see as a commercial area, I am sick of you all being bad drivers. Every time I leave or come back to my apartment, I fear my safety as I think one of you will hit my car and probably jeopardize my life. Please be respectful and remember that people do live around here. Here are some simple guidelines for driving that you should take heed to not only in my neighborhood, but always when driving.

1. A stop sign means stop; it is not a suggestion to slow down. When I make a complete stop, it is not because I am resigning my right of way to let you, in a hurried panic, rush off to your next shopping destination. I do so because it is the law and it applies to you as well. If it my right of way, I will go. If you decide to go before me and I'm making a left turn, you will risk hitting me at your own fault and you will pay to repair my car. If you do something obviously stupid, I will honk at you until you get the point and the hell out of my way.

2. Read street signs. If you are leaving Brentwood Square and making a left from Eager, the lane that has the sign that says "40 East Only" it means just that. It is illegal to drive through the intersection and you risk hitting people entering the 40 West lane. Again, if you do this, you will risk hitting somebody at your own fault and you will pay to repair their car.

3. When changing lanes, there is something installed in your car called a turn signal. Use it. Brentwood is a busy street and any time you change lanes it is risky, especially when you don't use your turn signals. If you hit somebody because they don't expect you to come into that lane, you will pay to repair their car.

4. Pay attention to your own light. At Brentwood and 40 East, the northbound light turns green before the southbound one does as to let people traveling north on Brentwood enter 40 East. If you are going southbound and decide to drive because the cars going in the opposite direction are moving, you risk hitting someone at your own fault and you will pay to repair their car.

5. If you are entering an on-ramp and making a right turn onto it, the person turning left to enter it has the right of way if they have a left turn signal. You must yield to these people. If you do not, you risk hitting someone at your own fault and you will pay to repair their car, or else somebody else will hit them when they have to stop in the middle of a busy intersection and it will still be your fault.

6. If it is raining hard enough that you have to use your windshield wipers, turn your lights on. This is the law. If it is dark, turn your lights on. This is the law.


If you follow these rules, we can coexist peacefully. These are all things that you should have learned when you acquired your license. Maybe you have forgotten and just need a refresher. I hope this worked for you.

Sensuous kind of experience

"I think...the difference between regarding architecture as the design of art objects as pure design [is] in a sense unrelated to the way in which the building will be used. It's the difference between looking at architecture as an art object, as a three-dimensional painting, as a convenient exploration for an art critic, and regarding architecture as a kind of sociological art form that participates in the development of the community, that participates in the further development of the--I hate to use the word functional because it's a throwback to another period--but what I have described to you are the designs which come out of a wedding between the space as used and the people who use the space. In a sense, the building is a comment, a statement, a mirror of the way each person in that building will reach out and either surround himself with that space or touch the space or remodel the space....I don't see buildings being divorced from the people inside the buildings or outside the buildings even. Everybody hugs the building in some form. It's a sensuous kind of experience."

- Betrand Goldberg

This blog post was sponsored by Zombies For Slay

So, yesterday's post over at the blog credited to Mayor Slay said that "More dead people are reported to have signed recall petitions in the 22nd Ward."

Dead people endorsing the other side? Time to finally take notice of all those dead voters who are still registered!

I guess we can conclude from this post in the Slay blog that his administration wants to keep 22nd Ward Alderman Jeff Boyd in office. Not surprising--seeing as how both Boyd and Slay are definitely in favor of using eminent domain to build dubious commercial projects, it's a match made in heaven.

Bus riding on December 26, part 2.

"It's so much vacant land and vacant houses on the North Side. If those motherfuckers built houses on the vacant land, it'd be just like the South Side. But they don't want to see that many black motherfuckers here, in one place. It's so much vacant land and vacant houses on the North Side."

--Overheard on the #30 Soulard bus today. One teenager talking to his friends as we drove through the Near North Side, the most demolition-ravaged part immediately north of Downtown.


Just incase you think that the average kid living in a planner- and 'dozer-ruined neighborhood doesn't understand why his neighborhood looks the way that it does.

Bus schedule changes, today and Monday, January 2

Several of my coworkers and I were late to work today. Why? Because Christmas was on a Sunday, Metro changed today to a Sunday schedule so that its workers could "observe" Christmas. While I'm glad they get the break, it would have been nice if the change had been well advertised or posted. I didn't hear about the change on any bus that I rode, and when I consulted my bus schedules this morning, they simply said, "NOTE: Sunday schedules operate on New Year's Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas." December 26 was nowhere to be seen on that list. Thus, we were late. Cmon, Metro, work with us here--we need to get to work!

Also of note: A coworker informed me that on next Monday, January 2, busses will again run on Sunday schedules. Share the news with all the public transit riders in your life!

(Thanks for the tip, Adria!)

Hyde Park Theatre may get facelift

Thomas Crone continues his intriguing Dead Theatres series with a photograph of the vacant Hyde Park Theatre that is apparently undergoing some tuckpointing work. According to Crone's conversation with a passer-by, it seems the tuckpointing project is part of yet another hair-tearing scheme of 3rd Ward Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr.: the theater will be rehabbed while a lovely and much earlier building across the street will be torn down for a parking lot. 'cuz there's not anywhere to park on the streets of Hyde Park, what with all of the crowds waiting to get in line at the restuarants in Bosley's restaurant district and gaping at the gabion wall around Shreve's.

Presents, again

Get or give too many gifts for Christmas? Here's an optimistic warning from your pals on Sullivan Street:



Our basement on October 3, 2005. Over 300 broken computers were among the debris that we removed.



The same space on October 6, 2005. Everything thrown out except for a few antiques that we discovered in the rubble, including an enamelled cast iron sink now in use in our kitchen.

Does red mean more rain?

Here is the Weather Ball atop the General American Life Insurance Building at 15th and Locust. I took this photograph last week from the roof of the building, looking up (of course). The ball, which dates to the 1950s, is a constant red these days. In the past, the building manager would change the color according to weather conditions.

Kluempers' new website

Photographer Greg Kluempers, who often captures odd abstractions found in St. Louis architecture, has launched a new website:

A Good Eye

Go to the mall with us

Just in time for last-minute holiday shopping! We have posted photographs from St. Louis Centre.

Skybridges to where?

Skybridges to nowhere in downtown Cincinnati, 2003. The parking garage building that stood here came down, but the convenient walkways remain expectant of a new reason to live.

Presents

A great Christmas present to this fair city of St. Louis would be an ordinance banning the use of vinyl siding in preservation review districts.

Another present that I may get when I'm about, uh, 65 would be an ordinance making every ward in the city a preservation review district. That's about the same time that the nomination to the National Register of Historic Places of the entire city as a historic district will be complete.

Since we will be having a happy Hannukah, perhaps our possibilities will be less limited...

Old Easton Avenue

One of the two remaining three-story 19th-century commercial buildings on the south side of Dr. Martin Luther King Drive just west of Jefferson disappeared last week.

We have no photograph of the building. May someone else have a better memory of the building than ours.

Rob Powers did get a photograph of another great commercial building across the street that came down in 2001. The "Heller Co." sign and its greatly-altered building still remain in use. This block was one of many thriving commercial blocks on the former Easton Avenue; by the 1930s almost every block of Easton from downtown through the Wellston Loop was chock-full of buildings housing apartments, stores and offices. The street must have been fabulously urban.

Today, traces of the past density remain, especially between Grand Avenue and the city limits. But the vitality is less evident, and certainly less concentrated. Enough buildings remain to make the thoroughfare a likely candidate for future revitalization.

St. Al's again

The Preservation Board denied a demolition permit for the historic part of the St. Aloysius Gonzaga parish complex in the Southwest Garden neighborhood. (I use the phrase "Southwest Garden neighborhood" even though my mouth forms the words "Fairmont District," but that's another story.) While the application was only for preliminary review of the demolition plans, developer James Wohlert did not prove that the buildings were unfeasible to rehab and his claim that the contract he had on the property contained a must-demolish clause has been disproven by Steve Patterson.

So, perhaps now Wohlert will at least cover all of the windows on the church building, left open since the Archdiocese removed the stained glass windows. Perhaps he will clean up the mess left by his tree removal crew, who felled many of the lovely old trees on the ground sof the parish. Hopefully he will perform basic maintenance on the buildings according to city code until a certain future for the buildings emerges.

That future has often been said to be housing. Turn the main church into condominiums, say preservation-minded folks. Does anyone have another idea?

Going to Chicago

Right after we plan a winter trip to Chicago, our personal second city, some yahoo buidling owner there gets our anger started by pointlessly damaging a building we know and love. Check out Looper's post Architectural Lobotomy... for the story.

We still look forward to the trip, which will remind us once again that a city with the ever-growing wealth of Chicago makes the same mistakes as St. Louis, without the convenient cover story of local conservatism and slow economic growth. In Tim Rakel's words, when they say that America is the best place in the world, all that means is that it's bad everywhere. Which can be a good thing -- the world is not static!

Victory for St. Aloysius

Today, the Preservation Board not only voted against permitting the demolition of the St. Aloysius Gonzaga parish complex but also voted separately to deny the permit outright. As someone who has followed the demolition saga since September and as someone who presented testimony today, I am greatly encouraged by today's meeting. Activism works! All of the efforts that Steve Patterson has put into the issue this week raised awareness and led people to send letters and testify. This church that seemed obscure and doomed in the fall received enought appreciative attention to convenice the Preservation Board to preserve it.

I note that no one from the neighborhood attended save demolition endorsers Alderman Joe Vollmer (D-10th) and Father Vincent Bommarito of St. Ambrose Church. Did anyone there really know about this important decision?

The votes were interesting. The vote on a motion by Commissioner Luis Porello (second by Mary Johnson) to grant the demolition permit went this way:

Yea: Porello, Johnson
Nay: John Burse, Melanie Fathman, Anthony Robinson, Richard Callow

The vote on the motion to deny the permit, made by Richard Callow (is this his Christmas present?) and seconded by John Burse went this way:

Yea: Callow, Burse, Fathman, Robinson, Johnson
Nay: Porello

Citizens interested in urban design and historic preservation can make a difference when we work together to challenge the status quo. In this case, we turned the situation around and got the Preservation Board to flat-out deny demolition. Although this is a preliminary review, and the developer can return to the Board for approval again, the vote shows that they will have to redesign their plans to save at least the church to make it past the Board. It's likely that the developer will keep trying to get the plan exactly as it is, though, so we'll see how long this victory lasts.

Make your own jokes, please

Bosley Estates breaks ground in 3rd Ward (St. Louis American, December 14)

SLU students survey FPSE storefronts

This just came in my inbox:

Who: St. Louis University master's students in urban planning and real estate.

What: Presentation of their survey of buildings along Manchester from Kingshighway to Vandeventer.

When: 6 p.m. Monday.

Where: Adams Park Community Center, Tower Grove Avenue at Norfolk.

Some of you may have noticed a group of students trekking up and down Manchester in the late fall. They were SLU students working on a project to gather data and make recommendations on building fronts along the main traffic artery (Manchester) in Forest Park Southeast.

These students will be taking their theoretical knowledge about planning and putting it to a practical purpose. The building inventory and recommendations will go to Irving Blue, who has been working with SLU faculty and students for the benefit of the neighborhood.

Please come to help the students hone their presentation skills in a public setting.

Blairmont, VHS Partners share address with McKee's companies

The July 15 Quarterly Report of the Jordan W. Chambers 19th Ward Regular Democratic Organization reveals some interesting information about its contributors. Namely, that the following contributors, all real estate holding companies, share the same address:

N & G Ventures LC
Noble Development Company
VHS Partners LLC
McEagle Properties LLC
West Alton Holding Company LLC
Oakland Properties, Inc.
Blairmont Associates Limited Company

That address is 1001 Boardwalk Springs Place in O'Fallon, Missouri -- pretty damn far from north St. Louis. 1001 Boardwalk Springs Place is the address of the largest office building in the sprawling ersatz New Urbanist WingHaven development. This also happens to be the mailing address for Paric Corporation and McEagle Development, the well-known companies founded by wealthy developer Paul McKee, Jr. (Paric is now led by McKee's son Joe.)

Readers know that we have detailed the adventurous purchases of rogue real estate companies Blairmont Associates LC and VHS Partners LLC, and that we along with other northsiders have been wondering what the hell these silent speculators have been trying to do in our neighborhoods. But few people would have known that Blairmont and VHS shared an address with these other companies, because both Blairmont and VHS were registered anonymously and their only known agents were Harvey Noble and Steve Goldman of Eagle Realty Company and Roberta M. Defiore. Even fewer would have known the links between Blairmont, VHS, Noble Development Company and N & G Ventures. Without seeing this report, I would have never learned of this additional entity or of the definite link with McKee's enterprises. Campaign finance disclosure again proves to be a valuable democratic tool. Together, these four companies own 244 north side properties and hold an option to buy one city-owned parcel:

Blairmont: 82
VHS Partners: 101
N & G Ventures: 58 plus one option
Noble Development Company: 3

The holdings of these companies are geographically confined: most are in the 63106 zip code and the a well-defined southern part of the 63107 zip code; all are in either Ward 5 or Ward 19; nearly every property is a vacant lot, with only a handful of vacant buildings in the inventory. (Although we know that they did attempt to trick a legally-blind woman into selling her own house to them.)

The question remains: What exactly is the tie with McKee? Perhaps he's just their landlord... Really, what is the link? And what is the plan for such a large area of the city?

The alternating silence and aggressive pursuit of properties by the entities at 1001 Boardwalk Springs Place is disturbing no matter how good their plan could be. These companies need to talk to their neighbors, who are very worried about the intentions and methods behind these companies. Consensus is built through communication; suspicion grows through silence.

Block Demolition of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church

Information about St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church, whose owner is seeking a demolition permit to be considered at Monday's Preservation Board meeting:

- Ecology of Absence, where we have posted photographs and a failry detailed history of the parish;

- Cultural Resources Office Recommendation to the Preservation Board, which recommends permitting demolition;

- Urban Review - St. Louis, where Steve Patterson has posted extensively on the church and the reasons to deny the demolition permit (and where I have posted my remarks while nursing a cold that kept me from completing our pages until recently).

All of the information suggests that the demolition plan is hasty and may lead to an unimaginative and poorly-designed subdivision of the site. The city is too strong these days to have to let developers do shit like this.

Open Letter on the Riverfront

Dear Diana Balmori,

I have a few questions for you:

1. Did you realize that the publicly-announced meeting on the riverfront plan scheduled for Decmber 3 did not happen? And that no press release has been issued by Great Rivers Greenway, the Planning and Urban Design Commission, the Mayor's Office or your office explaining why it did not happen or when it will happen?

2. The Arch grounds are surrounded by an ugly wall formed by concrete traffic barriers. Do you think that maybe redesigning that wall should precede or at least accompany grand riverfront plans?

3. Have you walked around on the east riverfront? The riverfront sould of the Arch grounds? North? What are your plans for those areas?

Thank you for your work so far.

Sincerely,
A Citizen

Council Plaza into the future

Bricks continue to fall from the mural on the east side of one of the two towers at Council Plaza in Midtown. (See this December 7 report from TV station KSDK.) While it's sad to see the mural deteriorate, good news came at the most recent meeting of the Missouri Advistory Council on Historic Preservation: approval of a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places for all of Council Plaza, which was developed starting in 1967 by local Teamsters as a "Model City" demonstration project.

For an odd reason, the St. Louis Preservation Board had recommended that the nomination be tabled until the mural could be repaired, even though the current ownership group stated that it needs tax credits to be able to restore the mural. Well, a motion to recommend approval of the nomination almost sailed through until member Richard Callow moved to table the nomination and reconsider it after the mural issues could be resolved. Never mind that the nomination of Council Plaza was only invoking "urban planning" and not "architecture" or "public art" as a criteria for significance. The Preservation Board unanimously voted for Callow's motion.

Wisely, the state council went ahead with the listing so that the mural can be restored -- provided that the owners intend to honor the promises they have made publicly at the Preservation Board and Missouri Advisory Council meetings. Even though the towers are rather clunky concrete boxes, the murals and brickwork on the windowless side elevations add depth and human scale that redeems the heavy-handed site plan.

At least the old spaceship-style gas station building, now Del Taco, stands intact. That may be the most attractive building on the site. (See a photo by Toby Weiss here.)

Dixie Square Mall scheduled for demolition

According to Wikipedia, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois will soon be demolished to make way for a stip mall. The Dixie Square Mall is famous for two reasons: the mall was the mall used for the car chases features in The Blues Brothers, and it has been vacant longer than it was occupied. The mall opened in 1965 and closed in 1978. Since 1978, it has sat and crumbled much like River Roads Mall in Jennings, Missouri -- also being demolished soon.

Taylor Avenue South of Manchester

New to the website:

Taylor Avenue South of Manchester - The physical street itself has been abandoned here, creating more problems in an already-depressed section of Forest Park Southeast.

Snow city

The Merchandise Mart, Isaac Taylor's 1888 Romanesque masterpiece at 1000 Washington, looked very stately in last week's snow. Then again, what in St. Louis did not look good in the snow?

Let it snow again!

Over on Hadley Street

The lot at 2805 Hadley Street in Old North St. Louis may be fenced but sports an incredible amount of debris. One can find broken PVC pipes, old furniture, solid fill and scraps of wood lying around its confines. That is, during the winter. In the warm months, the grass grows so tall on this lot that passers-by would not be startled if someone told them that a house was on the lot.

Next door, a lovely late 1870's townhouse is undergoing and ambitious rehab from an owner who is rehabbing othe rbuildings in the neighborhood. Across Hadley Street is Ames School, one of the city's finest elemtary schools.

The owner of the lot?

Blairmont Associates LC, one of the near northside's most active collectors of vacant lots and buildings. (Just ask the legally-blind woman these folks, acting as VHS Partners LLC, almost duped into selling three buildings she owned -- including her own home!) Where the owner of the house next door sees a need to restore his buildings, Blairmont sees nothing but the future value of the land and is willing to hurt its neighbors today so that its owners can profit tomorrow.

Blairmont: Rook to QB4

Word on the snow-covered street is that Blairmont Associates LC was not pleased with the attention it received from a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on its abusive ownership of the Clemens House and the resulting speculation on the identity of the deep pockets behind Blairmont. Sources say that Blairmont had no idea that the property at 1849 Clemens was a historic mansion; they were only interested in the large lot the home and chapel sit on. Thus, to avoid more publicity they will sell the house by January 6 (not sure why this date is being floated).

Of course, if they want to avoid attention they will need to do more than sell the Clemens House. We will continue to monitor their abuse of other historic buildings (such as the Brecht Butcher Supply Company buildings at 1201 Cass, if Blairmont is reading) and many northsiders are actively working to uncover the identity of Blairmont. People who are investing their time, labor and money in rehabbing homes on the near northside have a right to know who is behind Blairmont Associates LC and VHS Partners LLC. Some people think that they know, as the comments section on this blog shows.

For the record, we have no evidence that isn't already public record. Our guess is as good as yours -- probably worse, since we have neighbors who know a lot more than we do about them.

Springfield real estate prices very low

What $34,900 can buy in Springfield, Illinois.

The spirit of Old North St. Louis

Since our stove won't work until Saturday (needs a new ignition, a part that was hard to locate for a 1950's Roper), we are still eating out most every night. Last night, with the slushy roads populated by speeding drivers, we did not want to take our chances with driving anywhere. We walked the block between our Sullivan Street home and Crown Candy Kitchen on St. Louis Avenue, taking in the beautiful sight of our neighborhood covered in a blanket of snow.

Crown's was deserted, save for Mike Karandzieff and three staffers holding down the place. Mike himself waited on us, and we chatted with him before ordering our usual order. It's great that this place is so dependable and near. Earlier in the day, Claire had walked down to Marx Hardware on 14th Street to take back some wrong-sized cornerbead and to buy a miter box; the Marx brothers took back the cornerbead even though they operate on a cash-only basis and don't have a refund system. However, we have been regular customers of theirs since before we even moved into our place, and they reward our return trips with generosity.

After we ate -- and after we decided to splurge for delicious sundaes as cold as the air outside -- we walked back home. Light streamed out of a small storefront on 14th Street behind Crown's. Inside, a crew of twentysomethings was scraping paint off of a wall while listening to music. This is the future home of The Urban Studio, a community space that our neighbor and fellow twentysomething Old North St. Louisan Phil Valko has created.

We returned home full of hope and good cheer. I was so inspired by the spirit of the neighborhood that I finally found the strength to remove the broken old faucet from our sink so that we could replace it.

Anyone wanting to partake of the Old North community spirit is welcome to join residents for the neighborhood New Village Brewing Company's holiday beer-tasting tonight at 7:30 p.m. Email me at michael-at-eco-absence.org for details!

Hyde Park

MayorSlay.com notices the potential of the Hyde Park neighborhood. (And mentions use of space heaters, never mind that reliance upon space heaters led to a recent devastating fire in Old North St. Louis. We are lucky not to need 'em, at least not for a primary heat source.)

My advice to the Mayor and his scribe(s): work to get rid of Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr., Secretary-General of the Effort to Keep Hyde Park from Developing, and you will have an unprecedented urban renaissance brewing. Act fast, because the building stock is dwindling at an alarming rate -- often with the approval of Bosley and other powers-that-be, such as the demolition entailed by the hideous plans to expand and wall off Shreves Engine Rebuilders. Oh, and keep the Nord St. Louis Turnverein from falling down this winter and I'll send a nice Christmas card.

As readers know, we are among the many people who tried to invest in Hyde Park but reluctantly found it too unstable and the political leadership hostile to rehabbers. Perhaps attention from high places will be helpful.

Very glad to be back home in Mild Weather Land!

It's snowing in St. Louis. Now, I finally concede that St. Louis is experiencing winter.

Though it's been almost a year now since my at-long-last return to StL from Chicagoland, I remain acclimated to Chicago winters. So to me, this ain't cold. With the exception of the period when we had no heat in our house, I have not yet felt the cold unshakably deep down in my bones, which was always the feeling that signaled the start of real winter to me in Chicago. I stand by the often-open front door of the grocery store where I work and get asked, "Aren't you cold?" all day long, but ....well, no, I'm not cold. And I'll knock on wood before I type this (knock, knock), but in Chicago, you never really know it's winter until your car breaks. Yes, there are a few inches of snow on the ground right now in StL, but I'll eat my hat if they last four days. In Chicago, you look at the same snow for four months, and it gets gray and icy and hard, and what little exposed pavement there is gets this sickly pale look from so, so much chemical road salt.

(Shiver, shiver!)

My attitude may also be a result of what I used to always hear my mom say about St. Louis winters when I was a kid. Every winter, without fail, she would complain and complain that St. Louisans don't know how to drive in snow. (For the record, she grew up in Detroit, and spent several years living in Nova Scotia.)

For a Detroit-born child, or someone who's spent recent winters in Chicago, this isn't bad. But both of us had the luxury of living in homes with heat--something thousands of St. Louisans don't have--so that had a bit to do with our words as well. I guess it's all relative. If you've seen worse winters, this is bad, but if you're used to StL's otherwise warm climate or you don't have a warm place to stay, I can see how this could be overwhelming. And if you've never seen winter before, well.... Our four-month-old kittens were pretty impressed when we opened the curtains for them to look outside this morning.

Twain

Wednesday's entry in the blog attributed to Mayor Slay featured the phrase:

"...and that park downtown with the sculpture."

Yeah yeah, real cute. We all know you'd scrap the Serra sculpture entirely if a certain wealthy St. Louis Serra enthusiast wasn't looking over your shoulder. But yeah, we realize you'll save it, and try to move it to Grand Center in the process, since your administration thinks that the only reason Grand Center is such a failure is that it doesn't contain enough art (when in reality, the problem is that it contains absolutely nothing but art and parking lots for art).

Mmhmm.

Bowling alleys vanishing from St. Louis

Today's Post-Dispatch carries a headline that seems like something Claire and I would scrawl on tip money after eight cups of coffee at 3:00 a.m. at Uncle Bill's: Bowling alley is razed for shopping center

This time, the bowling alley is the Montclaire in Edwardsville, Illinois. I have never been there, and can't say anything about its architecture or history. I can say that many bowling alleys of all ages are closing or being torn down in the St. Louis area, and only a few new "boutique" style alleys are opening. The new alleys usually don't have more than 8 or 12 lanes and are often more geared toward alcohol sales than bowling.

Proprietors of bowling alleys that have closed recently have blamed the closures on the decline of league bowling, which guaranteed steady revenue for older alleys with high maintenance costs. I wonder if our atomized society will ever support good, affordable bowling alleys again. St. Louis once had enough bowling alleys to rival the most blue-collar of the other Rust Belt cities. Now, there are only a handful left, with only three lanes left in the city (two of which are small, new and not affordable to working-class people).

4101 Manchester Avenue

Word from Forest Park Southeast business folks is that Alderman Joseph Roddy and other businesses is pushing for a parking lot on the LRA-owned lot at 4101 Manchester, just west of Manchester's intersection with Vandeventer. This is a prominent location that is one of the first things visitors see when coming from the east into the business district along Manchester. Nothing could be uglier and less exciting than a surface parking lot at the entrance to a growing business strip. The clubs, bars and restaurants here rely on the density slowly growing as new businesses open in proximity to each other. Why not put a new business at this hot location?

Manchester is not exactly a safe street, yet it attracts hundreds of people every weekend night. These people are coming to the nightlife without surface parking. If the lot gets developed for a building, the crowd at Atomic Cowboy or Novak's is not going to fall off -- the crowd will only grow. Surface parking in a major location would only reinforce people's reservations about the business district; people are encouraged by vitality, architectural density and storefront activity. This site is perfect for a new building.

Fire in Old North St. Louis -- Please help.

On Sunday, there was a big house fire in our neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from our house. I didn't see it, but Michael and some of our neighbors did, and described the scene to me. When I got home in the evening, I turned on the news and saw that familiar building, with flames several feet high leaping up out of what used to be windows. I've not yet seen the building in daylight, but when we went by at night, I could see the dark sky through the blackened roof.

The family survived. They all got out alright. That's the most important thing.

One adult cat died and several kittens are unaccounted for, but all the birds and dogs survived, and there are a good eight or nine kittens staying at a neighbor's rehab house.

The family lost everything except the surviving pets and the clothes on their backs. They didn't have insurance. The Red Cross has been putting them up in a hotel for the time being.

The first floor of the house looks like it might not be too damaged, but a section of the side gable roof fell in onto the second floor and took a few bricks along with it. The building is not habitable. Sadly, the family did not have insurance.

Besides the tragedy of the family losing their home, several pets, and their belongings, there is a sad side to this architecturally: That fire happened on the very last intact block of Old North. That was the last block in ONSL which has never had a single demolition (despite a recent narrow brush with big-time speculators Blairmont LC), retaining some very early buildings. This is significant, considering the degree of loss here--ONSL is a very old neighborhood just outside of the very core of an older, industrial American city, so it's had a lot of demolition over the years.

If one could possibly take anything positive from this, it's that the neighborhood has done a good job of helping. The scene I've heard described was one of everybody trying to help--neighbors were out in decidedly non-winter clothes, holding onto rescued dogs, blow-drying wet kittens, arranging temporary homes for the pets, and watching neighboring buildings in case the flames spread. A friend of mine from South City who was sent to help at the fire through her volunteer work with the Red Cross said that folks from the neighborhood group approached her to coordinate the neighborhood response with that of the Red Cross. She said, "You guys are very lucky to have such a great group." And, of course, if any neighborhood can bring back an injured building, ONSL can. The damage on this house pales in comparison to that of others that are being saved in the North Market Place development. I hope that we can come up with a plan to bring this building back.

If you would like to help the family, there are several ways you can contribute. You can drop off donations at the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group office. We're assuming that the family had a total loss, so anything you could bring would help. Blankets, clothing for larger sizes (men's, women's, and young women's), toiletries, nonperishable food, and other household items would all help. If you would like to donate money, you can bring a check to the Restoration Group office or mail it there. Make the check out to "Old North St. Louis Restoration Group," and in the memo field write "ONSL Fire." The Group is going to pool all of the money donated for the family, and write them one big check with the total amount.

The ONSL Office is located 2800 N. 14th, St. Louis, MO 63107 (directly across the street from Crown Candy). The #30 Soulard bus stops at that corner, and the #74 Florissant bus stops a couple of blocks away at Florissant and Saint Louis. They are open from 9-5, M-F. (If you have some stuff you'd like to give but can't make it then, drop us an e-mail [eoa-at-eco-absence.org] and we can figure out a time for you to drop stuff off with us to pass along to the Group when they're open.)

Please consider donating a little something to the family, if you can. They've lost everything, and it's awfully cold this time of year.

National Trust Case Study on Century Building Released

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has posted its Case Study on the Old Post Office and Century Building, which comes in at a whopping 76 pages. The document was released to members awhile ago but not posted on the website immediately. Included is a commentary/rebuttal by Carolyn Toft of Landmarks Association, written without her being able to read the Case Study first.

Near northsiders wanted to flee

An article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses property owners who whose property would have been purchased for the ridiculous and cancelled "parkway" version of the new Mississippi River Bridge. Apparently, these owners are sad to not be bought out and remain a part of the growing near northside -- then again, with the city's ongoing circus of confusion with regard to development strategy there, it's hard to blame them.

If we had known that the Sandrowskis wanted a buyout for their spectacular home, we just may have made them an offer...

We want to know...

What buildings or places are not featured on Ecology of Absence that should be?

We are very busy with many endeavors and cannot promise to be able to add all locations, but we do want your suggestions -- now that we have DSL at home, we are better set up to actually work on the site again.

My personal list of sites to add includes:
- Busch Stadium
- St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church
- Doering Mansion
- Emerson School
- Buildings demolished for "Loughborough Commons"
- Mullanphy Tenements
- More Hyde Park locations
- Arcade Building
- Carter Carburator Plant
- Northland Shopping Center
- Beaumont Medical Building / Pulitzer Museum

Plus the extensive dopcumentation of Gary, Indiana that we have compiled in the last year and a half.

What do you want to see?

Our home

We never updated curious and concerned readers about the result of our heating dilemma. That's because it didn't take long to repair the problem -- just lots and lots of money that the seller should have provided. It turns out that the seller's agent never ordered a standard inspection by Laclede Gas and also never performed a boiler system inspection that she promised to us. Why should she? She handles such a high volume of sales, most with higher sales prices. Helping sales between low-income people is not a priority for her.

We had a frustrating series of repair events, with one problem arising after another. By the time we had heat restored, we realized that we would have had enough time to make most of the repairs ourselves. My ability to make such repairs is growing, but it's not at the point where I can work quickly under pressure.

No matter, because the hot water heating system is on and the heat is amazing. It's even and very efficient. We would never replace it with forced air heat, even if the system is a bit of an anachronism. Our boiler is in good shape and all of our radiators are in even better condition. We have rebuilt the fuel line and replaced leaking valves. The system needs maintenance, but the parts are still easy to obtain. Besides, our house lacks ductwork. We don't want to chop it up to add any, either (although we still