New Merry Widow Theater

Located at 1539 Chouteau Avenue, near the Truman Parkway, stands a somewhat-isolated relic of an urban commercial district that flourished on Chouteau in the LaSalle Park and Lafayette Square neighborhoods. The liveliness is hard to believe now, with the decrepit rear wall of St. Mary's Infirmary looming behind it, the questionable premises of a grocery store next door, AmerenUE's hulking campus to the west and the Truman Parkway walling vital Lafayette Square from this stretch. The building has been used for storage for decades, and is now owned by the utility giant across the street. Yet at the dawn of World War II, this neat little moderne building was the brand-new New Merry Widow Theatre, a neighborhood movie house replacing the old Merry Widow Theater one black east.

The theater was not lavish as local theaters were, but that barely mattered at a time when theater chains like Komm Theatres, which built and operated the New Merry Widow, gave even the smallest theater palatial terra cotta, winsome interior decoration and the right atmosphere for a dreamy night out. For a theater named after a motion picture itself (Von Stroheim's 1925 Merry Widow, which preceded the original theater), style started with the name and worked itself into each detail.

The building permit for the New Merry Widow is dated November 12, 1941, with Stamm Construction Company listed as general contractor and a reported cost of $25,000. Now-obscure architect Jack Shawcross designed the building, making the most of s restrained budget. Three portal windows dominate the front elevation like a mutated set of eyes, while four lines of dark brick rise at each side and another line defines the crown. Buff brick is punctuated by carefully-placed slightly-contrasting buff terra cotta. The city issued a second permit on December 23, 1941 for a $500 canopy and marquee; unfortunately, I have not located any photograph showing that feature. Overall, Shawcross manged to make a rather economical building as striking and dashing as anything Cedric Gibbons could concoct -- not an uncommon feat in St. Louis.

Inside, a terrazzo-floored lobby led to the 920-seat auditorium, where chandeliers and draped walls added elegance. The theater opened in March 1942, and quickly became one of the mainstays of night life for residents of the city's first public housing project, the Clinton-Peabody Homes located across Chouteau that also opened in 1942. However, the New Merry Widow's life span was short. After a name change that dropped the "New" from the name in 1951, the theater was open for only five more years before closing. The new life of the building certainly would have none of the glamour of Hollywood.

Occupancy permits from 1958 show that the Underwriters Salvage Corps used the building for storage of salvaged materials. In 1960, Tom & Sons Truck Repair converted the building into a repair shop. This alteration gave the building the garage door on its western wall and the infill of the original center theater entrance on Chouteau. In 1973, Affton Delivery Service took over the building and by the 1980s the New Merry Widow entered a long stretch of ownership by Hibdon Hardwoods, a wholesale lumber dealer. Although its original use is long gone, and much of the historic appearance eroded, the fine lines of the New Merry Widow are still evident. We're lucky that the old theater still stands to delight the curious passer-by, and give some sense of the urban culture that once thrived on Chouteau.

Readers might note a formal resemblance between the Merry Widow and the Massac Theater in Metropolis, Illinois. (See "Massac Theater Crumbles in Metropolis, Illinois", November 13, 2007.)

Industrial Inspiration?

There seems to be more than a passing resemblance between the Forest Park Southeast hotel designs that Drury Inn presented at a recent neighborhood meeting and the abandoned Lever Soap Plant in Pagedale. The three-dimensional renderings of two hotel buildings planned for a site at the southeast corner of the Kingshighway and I-64/40 interchange are in a conceptual phase, but their apparent industrial inspiration is somewhat encouraging.

Here is a close-up of one of the hotels:


Here is the Lever Plant, a lovely composition of industrial economy:
Just sayin'.

Quirky Gem on University Street

The house at 2314 University Street in St. Louis Place is one of the strangest 19th century houses on the near north side. Built in 1878, the house's central feature is a wide round turret rising the full height from the foundation to the pointed round roof.

The builder could not be trifled with convention on any point of the design -- form, style, floor plan and ornamental detail. I love how the windows on the turret are dwarfed by its sheer volume and their exaggerated wide lug-sills, emphasizing the castle-like quality of the turret. The stepped up brick cornice and projecting window surrounds give the building a heavy feeling. However, the heaviness is at odds with the delicate wooden parts -- the little trapezoidal bay window over the front door and the ornate side porch.

The later flat-roofed rear addition adds another interesting element with its slate siding, including multi-color lozenge patterns on each side of the lone second story window. All in all, this quirky home is gorgeous and another unique part of the unique St. Louis Place built environment. It is occupied and owned by an individual, so hopefully its future is secure. The house is located on the same block where we just lost a home owned by a McKee-related holding company, and lacks any landmark designation or demolition review protection, so nothing can be certain.

Exuberant First Assembly of God Church

Located at 2334 Grand Avenue in Granite City, Illinois, is the former First Assembly of God Church. While the congregation, which has roots dating back to 1909, has moved to a larger building on Madison Avenue, it still maintains the exuberant mid-century church building.

Basically, this church is the average center-aisle front-gabled church form that has persisted in America since the colonial period. Yet it is adapted to the formalism of its era. The gable is not symmetrical. The entrance is not centered on the gable end but placed to one side on a glass addition.

Most prominent, though, is the use of colored glass. This church comes from a period in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s when modernist architects were abuzz with large, loud color experiments. In 1961, Plaza Square Apartments opened in downtown St. Louis; architects Hellmuth Obata Kassebaum and Harris Armstrong gave each of the six multi-story apartment buildings vertical metal stripes in different vivid, bright colors. Googie designs in restaurants and bus depots abounded. Homes has bright garage doors in green, red, blue and yellow. Young John F. Kennedy was president, the Russian threat seemed diminished and all was well. Why not play with churches, homes, schools and office buildings?

The architect of this church sure did play. We have a beautiful asymmetrical tapestry of aluminum-framed colored panes on the front elevation and striped of color on the sides. Obviously, the colored panes also provided an economical alternative to stained glass, but in way no less stylish.

The church remains a festive point on a tidy, quiet street of well-kept houses. A steel city, Granite City welcomed modernism with open arms, as evidenced by the iconic Granite City Steel Building downtown. This church is one of the best-kept examples of the mid-century modern period in Granite City.

Odds and Ends

MCPHEETERS WAREHOUSES NEARLY GONE: The McPheeters Warehouses on Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard, subject of a Vital Voice column of mine published in June, are nearly gone. Demolition started two weeks ago, and now the one-story cold storage warehouse and most of the center building are gone.

SHANK SONS HONOR ISADORE: Peter and Stephen Shank have published Firbeams, a lovely website featuring the residential architecture of father Isadore Shank.

KIEL PROGRESS: In the St. Louis Beacon, Charlene Prost reports on progress in the plan by SCP Worldwide and McEagle Properties to re-open the Kiel Opera House.

VACANT BUILDING INITIATIVE: As featured in a story on KSDK TV this week, Alderman Kacie Starr Triplett (D-6th) has introduced Board Bill 174, which would require owners of vacant buildings to pay an annual registration fee, carry liability insurance and secure all openings, among other requirements. Church and nonprofit property is exempt, but Land Reutilization Authority property is not. More later.

STATEWIDE PRESERVATION CONFERENCE SEPTEMBER 10-13 IN ST. CHARLES: The 2008 Annual Statewide Preservation Conference begins on Wednesday, September 10 in St. Charles. I am co-presenting a workshop with Jan Cameron of the St. Louis Cultural Resources Office entitled "Vernacular Architecture from the Stone Age to the Space Age." Details here.

DRURY WANTS TO DO WHAT?: At Vanishing STL, Paul Hohmann reports on a bizarre plan by Drury Hotels to demolish the northwest corner of the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood for a new hotel. The plan threatens the Lambskin Temple and many historic homes. Drury will present the plans tonight at the Gibson Heights Neighborhood Association meeting, 7:00 p.m. at 1034 S. Kingshighway.

Eclectic Italianate House in JeffVanderLou

Sometimes there is a house so exuberant and eccentric that even the most seasoned architectural historian can't help but smile. This house at 3049 Sheridan Avenue in JeffVanderLou is one of those houses. The composition is strange in the best possible way. Here we could have a basic brick two-story Italianate town house with stone front. Yet we don't have that, because the true mansard roof is somewhat low-pitched with a deep overhang. The trapezoidal front dormer with rounded roof belongs on another house. That dormer doesn't quite match the dormers on the east side, which have roofs that mimic the roof form of the house itself.

The east side's trapezoidal bow adds character, and the ornate wooden cornice is continuous on this side. On the west side, where the wall is blind, the wooden cornice makes a transition to some of the most unique brick corbels I've seen in St. Louis. This detail is remarkable considering that historically this side was obscured by another house and these details would scarcely have been seen.

The house is occupied and in fair condition. The bright blue paint of the front elevation seems appropriate to the eclectic Gilded Age style of the house. Make no mistake about it -- architectural historians love to find such houses.

The Metal Roofs of Waterloo

I spent twelve pivotal years of my childhood living in Monroe, County Illinois, just southeast of the city of St. Louis. There I spent time taking in the historic architecture. Due to a mix of circumstances ranging from Germanic thrift to rural poverty, much of the remaining historic stock of the county retains a high level of integrity. Wooden window sashes, doors and porches remain. Barns have original siding. Walkways are often paved in brick. The county seat, Waterloo, offers a spectacular array of well-preserved brick and frame vernacular buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

One of the most noticeable aspects of Waterloo's architecture is that many of the gabled and hipped roofs retain historic standing-seam metal roofs, maintained with silver paint. Some people even opt for new metal roofing when they replace a roof. There is no reason these roofs can't last forever as long as the diligent owners keep them maintained.

Here is a sampling of metal roofs, all from just one side of one street: the north street face of Mill Street.

Mid-Century Modernism in Collinsville

Across the street from each other on Main Street in Collinsville, Illinois are two delightful one-story mid-century modern office buildings dating to the 1950s. These buildings aren't exceptional modern masterpieces, but simply nice examples of vernacular modernism: derived from the International Style and other sources by local architects or builders, highly functional and strongly stylized. These buildings are the modern equivalents of the nineteenth and early twentieth century vernacular storefronts lining other blocks on Main Street.



To the east is a later modernist pharmacy and medical office building -- there was a clear and exciting architectural conflation between the clean lines of modernism and the promise of postwar medicine. However, the modern purity erodes here through stylized cursive lettering that softens the severity of the purpose houses inside.



In Collinsville as elsewhere, attemprts to make downtown more modern weren't satisfactory enough for some businesses. One of those was the Collinsville Building and Loan Association, which in 1969 moved from Main Street to the sprawl of Belt Line Road. The Association still occupies that building, and its New Brutalist body hasn't changed much.

A Side-Style Storefront Addition

As I navigate the city, I am always on the lookout for storefront additions to historic homes. Regular readers will recall some recent posts of mine celebrating the sometimes-ungainly but always-intriguing vestiges of a city teeming with commercial life. The example above is located on the 2800 block of Lafayette Avenue just east of one that I chronicled seven months ago (Just Another Vacant Building?, December 21, 2007). That example was one of the prevalent types that stand in front of the parent house.

This one here, located at 2819 Lafayette Avenue, is of the gentler type. Built on the side lot of a stately single-family residence, the one-story flat-roofed addition creates more square feet of space on one level than the sort placed directly in front. I'm sure the builder's concern was with the economy of the structure, but the end result led to an addition that left alone the lovely front elevation of the Romanesque Revival house next door, built in 1893. That move proved fortuitous, as the front elevation retains original its limestone porch, granite details and wooden windows. The addition itself, probably built in the 1930s, is complementary without being dull. Spaced courses of pale brick, a continuous soldier course over the storefront opening and a framed frieze of angled brick offer simple but forceful masonry expression. We still have dozens of these additions left, and each one is a unique compromise between cost and ambition, change and history, old and new. These additions remind us that cities are creatures built for growth, and "historic" architecture is a tangle of buildings -- including historic buildings that block other, prettier historic buildings buildings.

Your Building Here?

When the two old stucco-covered buildings at the southwest corner of Washington Avenue and 14th Street fell late last fall, few would have guessed that the site created would be an empty, open pit this summer. The buildings fell for the proposed SkyHouse project (see "SkyHouse Raising Issues," April 29, 2007). That project seemed like a sure thing. Now, the project is dead in the water, and the site is the subject of rumors of foreclosure. We may not see a new proposal for a 22-story building on the site, but hopefully this site doesn't become the Bottle District of Washington Avenue -- just the Ballpark Village.

God and Man in St. Louis Place

This striking urban view in St. Louis Place includes four one-story, shaped-parapet houses on Sullivan Avenue and the imposing Gothic roof line of St. Augustine's Church. This is the sort of view that doesn't happen overnight, and benefits from inherent architectural differences between forms, styles, heights and uses. The church, designed by noted ecclesiastical architect Louis Wessbecher, came first in 1896. Wessbecher also designed the majestic Bethlehem Lutheran Church on Salisbury Avenue in Hyde Park. The church served a largely working-class German parish, and its style is very influenced by North German Gothic architecture. Clearly, the church expresses the highest aspirations of the neighborhood at the turn of the last century. That aspiration has been recognized through both City Landmark and National Register of Historic Places designations.

The houses -- part of a longer row between Parnell and Lismore -- arrived in the first decade of the twentieth century. In contrast to the church, the houses were designed with great modesty by local builders. The one-story homes are mainly decorated with the shapes of the front parapets and simple tin cornices (some removed). Yet the buildings were sturdy and practical for their residents, offering a single-family home rather than a space in a tenement. The houses are not part of any historic district, locally or nationally. In this view, three of the four houses shown are owned by holding companies controlled by Paul J. McKee, Jr.

Here we have high style and vernacular, a spire reaching upward to the maker and the houses laid out low to the earth of the workaday world. While the contrast is strong, the image tells a very coherent story about the origin of this part of the neighborhood. The tale told about the future is less clear. The long-suppressed parish church has found new use as the home of a mission, but its repair needs seem extensive. The houses sit largely empty and in limbo as part of a development project with no clear parameters or timeline.

The narrative of our past that is embodied in these buildings built itself over time. All it takes is a moment for us to decide that their preservation is a worthy goal.

A Dying House on Clinton Street

The poor old house at 1219 Clinton Street in Old North St. Louis may be headed toward the end of a long death cycle. The beautiful side-gabled brick house is one of those Federal or Greek Revival-inspired row houses that lines streets in Old North in the middle 19th century. Prior to the popularity of the Italianate and Second Empire styles in the 1870s, and with materials like tin not widely available for ornamental cornices, builders tended toward a restrained, elegant form. These houses had segmental arches or flat (sometimes arched) stone lintels over doors and windows. They were two stories with an attic in the roof. Cornices were usually simple dentillated rows or wooden boards with beading or other patterns. Mostly tenements, these houses had gallery porches in back with staircases leading to second floor flats. Amid dense blocks, with buildings attached, mouse holes opening to gangways were necessary to allow for the passage of residents to and from the streets.

Later, as the Italianate style hit the neighborhood, some builders built transitional buildings like this one. Here we have the restraint of the mid-19th century with Italianate touches like the rusticated limestone foundation and the Roman arches over the mouse hole and front door entrances. This house may date to the late 1870s or early 1880s, but it shares tendencies with homes built in the 1850s and 1890s. Furtermore, Old North has few buildings with intact mouse holes; the number may be around ten. This orphaned house tells us a lot about the stylistic evolution of vernacular architecture in Old North. Yet as the last surviving house on its block, its existence has been precious in recent years.


Battered by a major freak storm in July 2006, the house nonetheless improbably survived the next two years without further loss of walls. Sure, the house roof structure was essentially unsupported, and shifting gradually every month, but there was enough building material left to envision rebuilding. Definitely became maybe this June, when two storms led to devastating wall collapses, including all of the remaining east wall. Settling is fairly advanced with as much rain weight as has passed through the neighborhood this year.

Yet this advancd state of decay is a long time coming. The city Building Division listed the house as "vacant" since 1991. Sheila Bass, currently listed as owner of a house in the Academy neighborhood, owned the house for years before defaulting on real estate taxes; in 2005, the Land Reutilization Authority took title after there were no bids at a sheriff's sale. (Oddly, none of Paul J. McKee Jr.'s agents bid on the house.) At that point, much damage had already been done. For many years, the house was accessible through the first floor windows, left unboarded and without both sashes. A peek inside in 2004 revealed partial joist failure in the front parlor.

Many factors take a proud old house to death, but none are as powerful as water and negligence. Any one of these factors over a long enough period of time is a death sentence for an old building.

Gill Building Gets Its Due

The fate of the diminutive Gill Building at the southeast corner of Seventh and Olive streets downtown has been in question in the past few years. Originally built in 1910 and designed by Kansas City architect Louis Curtiss, the building was part of a grouping of white Winkle terra cotta-faced building on the 600 block of Olive Street. Across the street remains the massive Railway Exchange Building, but gone are the Tower Building, the Erker's Building and one other commercial building that comprised the district. In 1978, these buildings were included in the National register of Historic Places as the Olive Street Terra Cotta Historic District. At that point, the massive Famous-Barr parking garage already dwarfed the Gill Building.


Jack Randall owned the Gill Building for years, maintaining an apartment on the upper floors. In 2002, May Department Stores abruptly closed Randall's access to the fire escape in the parking garage (the only fire escape for the building, since the footprint doesn't allow for an internal one) and started a protracted legal battle. Randall abandoned the building and put it up for sale. When May sold its assets to Federated Department Stores, I expected a new deal for the building -- and that's what came.

Mark Pitliangas, who has developed a specialty in rehabbing the narrow buildings of Olive Street (including the Eastman-Kodak Building), purchased the Gill Building earlier this year and has just completed a full exterior renovation. The white terra cotta glistens, the window sash and casements are painted and the first two floors (long since altered) are attractive. Interior work continues, with the lower floors slated for retail and the upper floors for offices. (Office and retail projects seem stable downtown amid fluctuating financing.)

The end result will be a consolation to those who have admired the graceful building. Curtiss' delicate modernism -- the curtain wall, the abstract ornament that avoids classicism -- and the striking color create a building whose architectural power is greatly out of proportion with its small size. The Railway Exchange Building holds the eye, surely, but when you some upon this block the Gill Building gets the first glance.

Greening the Heartland Documented

The 2008 Greening the Heartland conference is over. Yesterday marked the end of the three-day conference on sustainable practices in Midwestern architecture and urban design, held at America's Center in St. Louis.

Yet the conference still exists, at least online. A crack team of local bloggers documented the conference experience through videos, interviews with conference organizers, photographs of events, posts about green success stories and so forth. Thanks to their efforts, those who couldn't fly across the country or pay the registration fee can immerse themselves in the conference online. (No gasoline for travel or paper for printing required!)

Read the blog here.

Strange and Cool in Old North

One of the most unique buildings in Old North St. Louis is the house at the northeast corner of Florissant Avenue and Dodier Street (numbered 1917 Dodier). Florissant runs diagonally across Dodier, which conforms to the street grid laid out in the 1850 East Union Addition. Of course, the house shows us that Florissant is diagonal with its chamfered corner parallel to that street.

So many details make this house unlike any other. Obviously, the corner and its treatment -- a stepped parapet against a side-gabled roof -- is singular. There is the concealed side entrance. Then there is the pleasant fact that the dentillated cornice continues across the chamfered corner, a move that provides wide, commercial Florissant with the same decorum as quite, residential Dodier. The formal elevations of the house are faced with a firm pressed brick that was not available until the 1880s, but the windows are topped with flat limestone lintels in a much earlier fashion. This house is strange in the coolest way!

A Mesker Storefront in Crossville

En route to the Storefronts of America: The Mesker Story exhibit at the Evansville Museum in Indiana, I happened upon a fine example of a Mesker front in Crossville, Illinois. Actually, this was no real happenstance. I pretty much figure I'll see at least one Mesker in any small town I encounter in southern or central Illinois.

Now famous due to the efforts of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency's Got Mesker? project, the Mesker storefronts are the work of two foundries within one family. George L. Mesker & Company operated in Evansville, Indiana while Mesker Brothers Iron Works operated in St. Louis. Both companies produced mass-manufactured iron building parts ranging from cast iron columns to sheet metal facades from the 1870s through the 1920s. Builders ordered parts or whole facades (easiest to identify) from catalogs to economically beautify commercial fronts in small towns and big cities alike.



This particular storefront is the work of George L. Mesker & Company. Acanthus-topped solid cast iron columns support a brick front wall hidden under sheet metal. The sheet metal is cored to resemble concrete blocks, and is adorned with continuous foliage-inspired elements at the window surrounds, above the storefront, above the second floor windows and at the cornice line.

Akin to the ornament of Louis Sullivan, the Mesker work references prairie nature. Classical details are minimal, while abstract and direct natural patterns dominate the composition. The belts of vines emphasize the horizontal nature of the wide front, echoing the rugged flat land of southeastern Illinois. Yet the metal front is obviously a modern thing -- at least, it was distinctly modern for its time. The design draws together the eager commercial of spirit mass manufacturing (sheet metal ordered by mail, near-uniform concrete blocks) with romantic tinges of natural beauty (conjuring infinite variety and difference).


These fine lines remain a testament to the once-promising outlook of the small towns of the Midwest. The Mesker front in Crossville isn't a Waiwright Building or a Rookery, but it somehow seems as much a true expression of time, place and modernity as those progressive urban buildings. The storefront building seemed vacant, and the sheet metal was peeling back on one end to reveal backing lath over the plain brick body of the building.

Yet the front is essentially good repair, retaining almost every original piece -- the end columns on the storefront probably weren't originally bare brick -- and even its original window sash. There's only a bit of rust. The building offers itself as a worthy part of the future of Crossville, whatever that may be.

Lumiere Celebrates Memorial Day

Dressed up for Memorial Day and viewed through the infrastructure of an electrical transformer station, the hotel tower at Lumiere Place serves its purpose well: to draw as much attention toward itself as possible, away from everything else. Even that shiny arch thing just south. Can that arch do this? Can the American flag glow? Come, moths, and bake in ecstasy!

Building Recycling

My latest KWMU commentary celebrates the conversion of the former Days Inn at Tucker & Washington into the Washington Avenue Apartments. Transcript and audio is online here.

Passage of a Block Face: 1900 St. Louis Avenue, North Face

Following the trail from the recently-demolished house at 1951 St. Louis Avenue, let's examine the rest of the block two years ago. Here were the thee buildings east of that house.

At the left, see a very stately Italianate single-family home. In the center is a brick tenement, with thew front wall painted and a likely mansard roof destroyed by fire; this building was razed in 2007. Both buildings were owned by the city's Land Reutilization Authority. These represent common styles and forms for the 1880s. The building at the right is an apartment building that is occupied to this day. This building demonstrates the near north side architectural sensibility of the 1890s -- the mansard roof form remains, but it is divided by a prominent brick dormer. The cornice is brick, not wood, and the entrance is formed by a generously wide Roman arch.The Italianate home today stands vacant, and the east wall of the rear ell is starting to lose bricks fast.

Anchoring the block faces eastern end is another 1890s building, a solid three-story storefront building housing Fleetwood and Son's. Behind the sleek modern vitrolite facade is one of the north side's coolest bars. (Warning: Fleetwood's is a 30-and-over establishment, so young punks should hang elsewhere.)



A 1909 Sanborn fire insurance map shows eight buildings on this (north) side of the 1900 block of St. Louis Avenue. Three of these, long gone, were large buildings. Just west of Fleetwood's stood the North Branch of the Young Men's Christian Association. Between the house at the other corner and that Italianate house were St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church and a large mansion enjoying a generous side yard between it and the church.


The 1964 Sanborn fire insurance map shows that the North Branch and the mansion were gone. The Romanesque Revival St. Paul's, which had been built in 1902 and designed by Matthews & Clarke, survived until 1998 when it was senselessly demolished by its owner (LRA).

Last year, all of the remaining buildings on the north side of this block (across the alley) were decimated by brick thieves operating with rapacious precision. This spring, those damaged buildings came down. What does the future hold for this block?

The Italianate house seems destined for demolition next. (May that not be the case.) The apartment building and Fleetwood's, though, are going to be around for a long time to come. What fills in around them is anyone's guess. Will it be new homes or shops that express the sense of place that the fallen buildings did? That depends on what our sense of this place is when we building -- or, more likely, the sense of who does the building and who delivers a vision for rebuilding St. Louis Place to that builder.

It's easy to shudder at the prospect. After all, the current sense of St. Louis Place held by many is confused and beneath the dignity of the neighborhood's generations of residents, past and present. Once a certain sense emerges, rebuilding will lead to a block face as engaged in the values of its age as this block face once was. Although we have seen tragic loss of this block, let us not neglect to lay out the blueprints for a rebuilding that will honor our heritage.

DeVille Motor Hotel in the News This Week

Today's "Inside the Metropolis" column in the Vital Voice features a guest writer, my colleague Lindsey Derrington. Lindsey has written an eloquent and impassioned plea: "Recoup DeVille Motor Hotel: No Need to Demolish Historic Building". The article is a perfect summary of why we can't afford to lose the DeVille Motor Hotel (a.k.a. San Luis Apartments).

Earlier this week, Preservation Online also covered the issue; read that article here.