A City Neighborhood Can Never Have Too Many Storefronts

UPDATE Monday, March 22 at 7:21 p.m.: The Preservation Board voted to uphold staff denials for both 414-18 N. Boyle and 6102 Michigan.

The little storefront row at 414-18 N. Boyle in the Central West End is one of a few commercial buildings left in the area once known as "Gaslight Square" -- but not for much longer. Owner Core Holdings LLC applied for a demolition permit in January. The Cultural Resources Office denied the permit, and the owner has appealed to the city's Preservation Board. The appeal is on the agenda for the Monday, March 22 meeting of the Preservation Board. The proposed reuse for the site? None.

At first glance, the row seems easily forgettable and somewhat damaged. Yet the little row is both a reminder of the past streetcar-fueled development of the Central West End and an asset for the surrounding area, which is full of rehabbed existing buildings and the new houses that now occupy Olive Street to the east. The neighborhood could use a few retail outlets. Anyone who has been to the strip around the Gaslight Theater one block south and around the bend knows that the neighborhood can support commerce.

The little row was built behind a large house that once stood facing Westminster. The first section was a small one-room brick carpenter's shop built at the alley in 1910; the row expanded at some point in the next decade. The Maryland Avenue streetcar line went north along Boyle to connect to the Olive Street line; this little backyard was too valuable not to build up. In fact, the owner of the house to the south built a similar row at 408-10-12 N. Boyle across the alley -- now long gone.

Sculptor Sheila Burlingame (1895-1969), whose works include the sculpture on the front of Nagle and Dunn's St. Mark's Episcopal Church (1939) at 4714 Clifton, maintained a studio in the storefront at 412 N. Boyle. The existing row's tenants were less glamorous but also indicative of a vibrant urban fabric. The 1940 city directory shows Jacob Shaikewitz offering shoe repair at 414, barber Frand Bond at 416 and Georgia Gunn's beauty shop at 418. By 1959, at the onset of the Gaslight Square heyday, 414 N. Boyle was home of the Handy Shopperdeli, 416 housed the Boyle Avenue Barber Shop (Frank Bond still around?) and 418 was now Dorothy's Beauty Shop. The row would be vacant within a few years, and later used as a church before going vacant again.

It would not take much to bring back the commercial bustle to this stretch of Boyle. The streetcar is gone, but residential density remains. Yet the demolition of the Olive Street commercial buildings renders remaining storefronts as precious resources. Judging from recent decisions, the Preservation Board is unlikely to approve a permit for an out-of-town owner with no redevelopment plan. Common sense suggests a different course of action: Preservation Board denial and a for-sale sign.

Also on Monday's Preservation Board agenda is the appeal of a Cultural Resources denial of a demolition permit for 6102 Michigan Avenue in the Central Carondelet Historic District. I'd be very surprised if any Board member votes to overturn the appeal.

The Preservation Board meets at 4:00 p.m. Monday on the 12th floor of the building at 1015 Locust Street downtown. Written comments may be submitted to the Board via Adona Buford, Secretary, at BufordA@stlouiscity.com.

Preserving a Sense of Site History at Carondelet Coke

Today Mayor Francis Slay and Governor Jay Nixon will hold a join press conference announcing a new plan to convert the 41-acre, city-owned Carondelet Coke Plant into an industrial park. Summit Development announced a similar plan in 2006, but the plan stalled after some initial work was done on the site -- including bringing in a giant mound of containment soil.

I have published a basic history of the site and documented the buildings over the years. However, I never expected the buildings to be preserved. The site is contaminated widely with many substances related to the coke production process, which began at the site in 1915.

Still, there are two resources on the site whose preservation would require minimal loss of usable site and whose presence would provide the new industrial park with readily-identified icons. Given that the coke plant was one of the largest employers in the Patch section of Carondelet for over 60 years, some tangible link with the industrial past is fitting. Thousands of area residents worked at the plant, enduring the emission-laden landscape to support their families. Why not allow future generations the chance to see something when they visit the site where a grandfather or great-grandfather once worked?

The most obvious resources to preserve is the remaining brick smokestack, which stands at the south end of the coke oven battery. This was one of two stacks that relieved the smoke from the ovens. This stack dates to the ownership period of Great Lakes Carbon Company, which owned the plant from 1950 through 1980. Being constructed of modern brick within the past 60 years, it is in sound condition and requires minimal tuckpointing to survive another 100 years. Perhaps the stack could sit in a small public area with interpretive signage and photographs so that people can interact with the site history.

The other structure is visible only from the Mississippi River and also dates to the Great Lakes ownership period. This mighty steel coal loader dates to 1953 and was used to unload barge loads of coal arriving at the plant as well as to load outgoing barges with coke. The loader connects to the coke plant by an underground conveyor system. The basic structure is sound, although years of abandonment have led to rust and some deterioration of deck plating. There are few extant 20th century river side coal loaders in St. Louis.

I have marked the locations of each structure on this circa-1950 aerial view of the coke plant. Most of the remaining plant has been wrecked. The buildings literally are now ruins after being slowly and possible illegally demolished in the past two years.


Tying the new industrial life of the site to its past would preserve the tie of this site to the Carondelet community through a physical link. Our industrial past too often disappears through alteration and demolition, and in many cases active industrial sites leave behind few photographs of their historic life. Here we can leave some key parts of the past behind for future generations to contemplate.

Additionally, the Great Rivers Greenway District is discussing building a south trail system that would include Sugar Loaf Mound and run along the riverfront. Could the trail pass south to an industrial heritage site at Carondelet Coke? Joliet, Illinois has a lovely trail system that connects to Joliet Iron Works Park, an interpretive and recreational site that incorporates the ruins of the Joliet Iron and Steel Works. That site is a destination. Imagine if one could travel on a river side trail that linked a Native American mound with a river side coal loader, right here in St. Louis.

Under 100 Degrees

A trip to the Central Library today revealed two things:

1. Both sides of Olive and Locust streets between 10th and 13th streets need street trees. Also, 11th Street seems to entirely lack street trees south of Lucas (that is, where people actually walk on 11th Street).

2. Bryan Mullanphy once owned the land on which Loughborough Commons is being built. This land was still owned by his estate in 1883, albeit partly subdivided although not yet built upon.

Carondelet Coke Plant Will Fall

According to a press release on the Mayor's campaign site, the old Carondelet Coke plant will be redeveloped. This is a shock to those of us who assumed that its overgrown, ruinous landscape would always be around for autumn walks and clandestine film making. Then there was Dylan Haasinger's quixotic and hopeful plan to retain the passive life of the site by turning it into an urban nature preserve. Alas, it's back to the economic life for the land at the confluence of the Mississippi River and the River Des Peres -- and a far less interesting but cleaner life it shall be.

I urge city officials to thoroughly document the site, which is probably the most fertile industrial archaeological sites in the region aside from East St. Louis' Stockyards District and the Commonwealth Steel foundry in Granite City. Despite cleanup needs, some salvage of artifacts also seems reasonable given that there probably will never be a coke plant in the city of St. Louis again. That's a mixed blessing!

Left Placeless (At Loughborough and Grand)

The western edge of Carondelet was disconnected by the construction of Interstate Highway 55 in 1961, and was subsequently absorbed into the Holly Hills neighborhood despite retaining strong architectural similarities with its old body. While decades of highway-traveling St. Louisans see the highway as a natural western boundary to Carondelet, the common fields of the village Carondelet stretched as far west as the road that became Grand Avenue. These fields lay largely undeveloped until Carondelet was annexed into St. Louis in 1870, and found a focal point when Carondelet Park was plotted in 1875. The area south of the park gained many of the features of old Carondelet, with hilly terrain dotted in relatively low-density frame homes and brick bungalows.

Later additions to this area built it up further with sturdy buildings, mostly one and two stories. In the early years of the 20th century, flat-roofed homes with shaped parapets were prevalent. The builders were familiar Carondelet contractors, including William and Theodore Degenhardt, whose family lumber business had ballooned into a real estate force in Carondelet at the turn of the century. By the 1920s, Spanish Revival and Craftsman bungalows filled in the remaining vacant lots. A few homes rose in the years after that on lots where very old frame homes collapsed, rotted, burned or simply fell from favor. Many of these buildings were concentrated on City Block 3026, bounded by South Grand on the west, Loughborough on the north, Blow on the south and the former Alaska Street -- later part of a Schnucks grocery store parking lot -- to the east.

That Schnucks store was a moderate intrusion in the neighborhood, but nothing like the real estate project that was proposed by the Schnucks family real estate arm, the Desco Group, in 2004. They called for tearing down their store, all of the buildings on City Block 3026 and the Nordyne plant to the south. The cleared area would become the site of a new retail development called "Loughborough Commons," containing a large Lowe’s hardware store, a new and expanded Schnucks store and other unnamed tenants. The need for the project was created through public relations, not public demand; Carondelet and Holly Hills are steady but not booming retail areas, and surely the Schnucks store was doing very well as it was. The project hinged on a lot of retail space built on speculation, too. Negotiations with Nordyne were successful, and the backing of the alderman helped convince homeowners to sell out -- or face eminent domain proceedings. One household, at 7016 S. Grand, that did refuse to leave were dragged into eminent domain proceedings that kept their home standing into December 2005. Getting approval of city board and the Board of Aldermen for the project was quite easy, and Mayor Francis Slay used the project in his 2005 re-election literature.

Demolition of Nordyne commenced in April 2005. Next came the venerable Carondelet Sunday Morning Athletic Club at 1012 Loughborugh, followed by demolition of the homes (except 7016 S. Grand) in July and August. As soon as the Nordyne land was cleared of structures, it deeply resembled a muddy no-place that was even worse than the monolithic plant that it replaced. By the end of 2005, history had been removed completely from the site. Far from looking clean, however, the cleared site looked chaotic and volatile.

Here we see another attempt by profit-driven developers to carelessly obliterate a definite geography. The modest homes, athletic club and even the Nordyne Plant were ripe with traces of history. Their comparable age, small material scale and dense placement gave the blocks along Loughborough, South Grand and Blow historic character. Each ornamental brick, old-growth tree and original front door served not only as visual stimulation for a passer-by but gave the area a series of tiny identification marks. Not only did the place consist of the city blocks, those blocks contained different lots, the lots contained buildings and the buildings encompassed thousands of little unique parts. Each house was a unique architectural creation, and most were memorable compositions. This was a place made for the casual eye of the pedestrian.

In stark contrast, the Loughborough Commons project omits strong repulsiveness. The very name is an assault on the notion of public space, despite its providing its own punch line in jokes about its plainer-than-Jane architecture. To call private, regulated space a "commons" mocks not only public willingness to participate in the robbery of their own democratic rights but also the fundamental principles of urban life. Cities create architectural space by balancing private and public spheres as well as enclosed and open space. A commercial strip mall may contain more open space than a small city park, but it does not create any space that belongs to the citizens at large. There is an admission price, so to speak, and the design is not the result of consensus or even government input. Worst of all, the space is adverse to pedestrian access -- unlike real urban commons that are vehicle-free. Loughbrough Commons consists of private stores surrounded by paved parking lots, with very skimpy sidewalk connections. The customer is expected to arrive via private vehicle and chart a sure course; casual wandering is not invited, nor is it even desirable. (Who would wander around a parking lot except a mugger or stray cat?)

The design of the strip mall buildings hardly warrants critique; they are typical functionalist boxes. The developer does not care about the design any more than I do. If the buildings themselves attracted any attention, they would overshadow the large backlit plastic signs affixed to them. Their role is the containment of space, and provide no decoration or enjoyment. The best hope that designers of such buildings have is to avoid offending any one user of these buildings. Better still would be getting the user to completely forget what the buildings looked like, since the goal is the association of the location with a particular store brand. No mix of uses is included either, because that would require greater architectural effort and would diminish the impact of the store's advertised names. Function dictates form, and form is obscured as close to the point of obliteration as possible.

The Commons project is yet another exercise in place-erasing. The design and function are purely commercial, and make no meaningful relationship with the topography, surrounding buildings or even the street grid. The strip mall faces the interstate highway, like any other. The context has not been embraced or even ignored. It has been taken at a value of zero, as if the strip mall's function in itself should be the only concern of the design. The end result is the reverse, though: the strip mall pierces the city fabric as a void, a zero-value surrounded by the strong presence of the southern part of Holly Hills. From the houses to the abundant, planned flora of Carondelet Park, this setting is a well-defined urban space. The strip mall has claimed part of the context, but visually it seems a tasteless anomaly.

If this were a chance occurrence, there would be little reason to worry greatly. The architecture of "Loughborough Commons" would discredit itself, and the public would seek to prevent another rupture of their geography. Unfortunately, though, this is just the latest trauma to attack a city whose general public has long since resigned itself to such attacks. Even in this area, the interstate highway took away some definition of place and disconnected Holly Hills from Carondelet, way back in 1961. Then came the existing Schnucks store on Loughborough, and the Nordyne expansion project. By the time THF arrived to build their project, the context here was diminished. Citywide, so much erasure of place had happened that a "what-the-heck" attitude was prevalent. Primary opposition to the project came from residents whose homes Desco took, although every last one has now settled with the threatening real estate giant on a "fair price." Eminent domain opponents who sided with residents seemed more interested in securing a fair price or defending the right to private property -- the same right that enabled THF to claim it has proper rights to build its strip mall -- than in defending the right of citizens to place. Enough place still existed here that its preservation would have been greatly beneficial to the social fabric of the neighborhood.

How Do You Get to the River?

It's late in January and I find myself slipping on the ice. I am walking down a deserted city street that runs near an abandoned industrial complex. Few cars travel this street, but luckily one has driven here recently, or I wouldn't have the fortune of walking in the tire tracks that save me from a fall. Still, I can't avoid slipping every few minutes.

Why am I enduring this desolate and dangerous walk on one of the coldest winter days of this season? I am looking for access to the Mississippi River in the city of Saint Louis. Such a search requires patience even when one knows where to go, as I do. Beyond the public and dirty river access provided at the levee parking lot at the foot of the Arch grounds, all other access points require a little bit of walking.

There is an almost-inaccessible short promenade at the foot of Bellerive Park, but the last time that I tried to go there I found construction equipment in my way. Technically, that promenade is the only park in the city that offers access to Old Man River. It's odd that the city doesn't even post any signs in upper Bellerive Park pointing out how to get to the riverside.

Yet its even more odd that a city with a riverboat on its city seal, that was a pivotal seat in the river-based exploration of the Western United States and that was once a prosperous inland port does almost nothing to point out that the Mississippi River is more than just an iconic legend around here. Even Downtown Now's new signs, which readily point out places where people can spend money, do not point out how to get to a place where one can sit by the peaceful flow of muddy water that was so important to the city's founding and commercial development.

Signs really wouldn't help much, though, because they could only point to access that doesn't exist. Much of the riverfront in the city consists of concrete floor walls or industrial tracts such as my favorite river-watching spot. And the ostensibly grand civic riverfront of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial has been host to burger barges and a shabby surface parking lot in the last twenty years. City planners have gradually cleared the riverfront of moored vessels, but they have never studies moving the parking lot.

South of the Arch grounds, one can walk though the usually-open gates on the flood wall and get to the river, but then the whole sense of the urban world disappears as one stands between a tall wall and a river. This is a bit more intimate spot than the access offered in front of the Arch grounds and Laclede's Landing. There are no cars. But then again, there aren't likely to be any people and hence the experience is rather cold. Engineering thwarts the potential for an urban river outlook.

Elsewhere in the city, people don't have many choices. The north riverfront trail offers many good vantage points and in a few places provides points of access. These points, however, entail walking down banks and trespassing. They aren't public in any sense at all. Around the Chain of Rocks Bridge, once can get fairly close to the thicket of trees and foliage growing near the riverbank, but without a machete won't get too far.

Then there is my favorite place, which I want to keep a secret. This place is not easy to get to, but it provides a clear vantage point far from automobiles and flood walls. I can see the city behind me and the river in front of me, and I can sit down and listen to the river. I don't feel good about having to keep this place private, but it's not my choice. Like 96% of the rest of the city's riverfront, it is not a public space in the eyes of the law. Of course, all of the riverfront is natural public space. The Mississippi is the city's greatest natural resource, despite its forces removal from the lives of Saint Louisans.

We have turned our backs on the Mississippi River because it no longer is the backbone of our commerce. Like the railroads, the river is a commercial casualty of the interstate highway. But that's fine, because the river is a natural force that would much rather beckon weary city dwellers to its peaceful banks on a cold January day than be clogged with steamboats and barges. It's time for us to cooperate.