Fire in Fountain Park

A sweltering, humid afternoon yesterday broke what had been a string of some of the most pleasant St. Louis summer days in recent years. In the Fountain Park neighborhood, the dog day brought more than just unpleasant weather. At around 12:40 p.m., a fire broke out at the abandoned home at 1124 Bayard Avenue. The blaze roared through a modest two-story home that has experiences fire twice before, according to a neighbor.

Neighbors who had been hanging out indoors in search of air conditioning came outside to watch a mid-day spectacle that is unfortunately a common occurrence in much of north St. Louis. Firefighters were quick to respond, and had the fire under control quickly. The firefighters surely earned the respect of the assembled crowd on Labor Day afternoon.

The house was not one of the stunning homes that line Fountain park proper, nor was it the nearby "castle" building. (The sight of dark smoke coming from near that structure made me shiver.) The brick home has acquired permastone on the first floor and flimsy siding above. Still, it had been a solid residence until going vacant two years ago. Its altered facade still made up part of a street scape wall that joins others to form the architectural context of life in Fountain Park. The house had a supporting role to the fancier buildings, but its loss will make the drama a little less full.

The neighborhood atmosphere yesterday was a far cry of the vision of John Lay, the Virginia farmer who platted 158 acres of his land just west of the city limits in 1857. Dubbing the subdivision "Aubert Place," Lay envisioned a fashionable middle-class enclave centered on an elegant park, like those he had seen in London. Early advertisements suggest that Aubert Place was a country retreat, and certainly the character of this area supported that assertion. Development was slow, even though half of the lots sold at auction in 1857. One reason for slow growth was the distance for public transit, which would not come for nearly another twenty years.

Most early homes here were frame, and only forty had been built by 1883. Still, annexation into the city in 1876 encouraged growth, as did the continued westward growth of the city. Streetcars came down Delmar to the south and Easton to the north, with a line also running straight down Euclid through the heart of the development. Development of the Central West End in the early 1890s coincided with the city's investment in the park in 1889. The city took the undeveloped central feature of Aubert Place and built amenities, including the fountain that would lead to the gradual name change of the neighborhood. Lay's charming suburb had been missing the elegance of a well-planned park. With lots reserved for single-family homes and a required twenty-foot set-back, Aubert Place was destined to be genteel. Building was rapid between 1892 and 1897, when two brothers named Davis built many homes. A second boom covers the years of 1903 through 1925, when unrestricted blocks around the original subdivision were developed with two-flats and other multi-family properties. Now known as Fountain Park, the neighborhood thrived with middle-class residents.

In the 1940s, Africa-Americans began piercing the housing restrictions in Fountain Park, at the time when many whites were leaving for more fashionable addresses west and north. A renewal took place, and the community remained strong for several decades until signs of decay crept in. To this day, there is amazing dichotomy in Fountain Park. Many blocks are very well-kept and retain their original beauty, while other blocks are marked by vacant lots, boarded buildings and vestiges of vice. Not surprising, the original Aubert Place is stronger than the outer tier of multi-family buildings. The posh Victorian middle-class suburb is now a problem-ridden 21st-century American urban neighborhood. That is to say, that for every day like yesterday, it has another good day. And for every beautiful home on Fountain, there's a house like 1124 Bayard.

More coverage:

STL Streets

Random Talk on Urban Affairs

Akita Video Network

A Fine Storefront Addition

Storefront additions to residences were very common between 1920 and 1950 between on Lafayette Avenue between Jefferson and Compton in south city. I have written about two others (read them here and here) in this stretch, and neglected to point out a robust corner storefront addition at the southeast corner of Lafayette and Nebraska avenues. On the front of an eclectic Craftsman-inspired house with false mansard and front gable, we have the finest storefront addition on Lafayette. Actually, the addition houses two commercial spaces. Cast iron columns frame generously-glazed traditional storefront openings (which wrap the side), and an intact dentillated tin cornice with a second order of brackets provides a refined crown. Many of these additions bear the programmatic inelegance of their utility. Not this one.

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.

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.

Healthy and Active Blogging

The staff of Trailnet's Healthy and Active Communities Initiative have been blogging away for the last two years. Not reading their work? You should be. The blog provides fresh and insightful information you don't get in many urban issues blogs -- writings about the history of food prices, developments in biodiesel, the problems with the abundance of corn in our diets and so forth. Just as autocentric urban planning is very unhealthy, so is an economic system that keeps nutritious foods off of the shelves of inner city groceries. Trailnet's staff keep pointing out how these two problems are related, and how the future of every urban area depends on more than just bricks and mortar.

Urban Prairie in Downtown Evansville, Indiana

In the heart of Evansville, Indiana, just across the street from the former federal building, is this half-block of vacant earth. It's not a construction site. It's not a parking lot. It's just land with grass growing on it.

Tomorrow Night: Development Challenges & Rewards Discussion

DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES AND REWARDS

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
7:00 p.m.
The Laurel Sales Office, 625 Washington Avenue


As part of Historic Preservation Week, ReVitalize St. Louis, the Rehabbers Club and Landmarks Association of St. Louis sponsor a panel including Jay Swoboda of EcoUrban Homes and Brady Capital and Stephen Acree of the the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, whose work has included many historic rehabilitation projects. Panelists will discuss their careers in St. Louis, the challenges they have faced and the current state of the city's real estate market. Question and answer session to follow -- bring your questions! Free.

UPDATE: Developer Will Liebermann, a developer who has done several projects on and around Cherokee Street, has joined the panel.

A Lonely Stand

The future is always doubtful to that last historic house on a block in a neighborhood whose primary land use has changed. Neighborhoods just outside of the central business district of American cities that were residential walking neighborhoods typically lost their character in the twentieth century as commercial use crept outward. Large new buildings went up on main thoroughfares, followed by mixed use and apartment buildings on other streets. Old houses became rooming houses, offices and even small factories -- until their narrow lots were added to adjacent lots to make sites for larger buildings. Secondary streets often kept much of the old housing stock, but the main streets emerged from second wave development looking more like downtown than ever.

On some blocks, like the one shown above on North Avenue just west of Milwaukee in Chicago, one will find the houses that survived the development waves. Some of these houses stand alone, adjacent to parking lots. Their futures are doubtful, since they stand apart from the historic context that would make their defense likely should a developer want to take the house and the adjacent lot and build a new building. In Chicago, tear-downs like that seem to happen weekly. The new construction is often an insipid four or five story building with street level retail and condominiums above, rendered in a bland minimalist style or a gaudy postmodernist mess.

Other survivors are more fortunate, like this old Romanesque Revival house. When the building to the right went up in the 1910s, the developer didn't need, want or buy the house. When the building on the left went up, the same story. Neighbors came down, but not the erstwhile little house. The house slipped through both times. With such a small site, and the house being so close to the neighbors, one could guess that the house has escaped demolition. Then again, in urban real estate, nothing is ever certain.

There were years in recent memory when this stretch of North Avenue were devoid of much development interest, and then things changed rapidly. Even if the market is in downturn now, that won't last forever. Some locations hold inherent value that survives the market's cycles. Some buildings do too. Is this house one of those now, by virtue of its escape?

The Soil Fails

Curtis Eller came up with a song title and phrase so haunting to those of us who live in north St. Louis. "After the Soil Fails" is really a song about a vivid dream inhabited by historical figures like William Tecumseh Sherman, but its references to the imagined deaths of New Orleans and Philadelphia invoke the condition of emptying sections of St. Louis.

"One of these days the soil is going to give out," warns Eller. While the causes of much of the loss of the built environment of north city is more economic, the landscapes left behind are devoid of any clues. To the innocent wanderer, perhaps it seems that the very land on which the city is built is dead. Just as bad soil kills crops, bad land could kill blocks or neighborhoods. The difference is that the infection of farm soil is real, while the infection of our city soil comes from within us, legitimate brown fields notwithstanding. City land is as good for city life as ever. Trouble is, city land's healthful properties come not from its physical content but from how it's labeled on maps and valued by builders. An ounce of soil from a lot in St. Louis Place could be as nutrient rich as any found in Clayton, but that has nothing to do with the value of the land it composes.

Hence, the best soil for farming in the region may be in places like the floodplains of St. Charles County, while the better soil for building could be the bedrock-pinned land of north city. We don't seem to mind this absurdity as continue to build out irresponsibly. If soil affected our settlement patterns as it does planted crops, our soil would have failed awhile ago. Maybe it still will.

Kaskaskia Remains

The villages of Dozaville (once Goshen) and Kaskaskia, Illinois remain as vestiges of settlement on Kaskasia Island. Dozaville is a complete ghost town, at least officially -- it has been legally dissolved for decades. Kaskaskia remains incorporated, although with less than a dozen residents in four households within its boundaries has no real need for civil government. Kaskaskia is one of those places that has achieved zero population growth according to the US Census -- a bizarre stasis for a town once of great importance.


Although part of Randolph County in Illinois, the island is west of the Mississippi and accessible only via a bridge from St., Mary's, Missouri. A shallow channel barely recognizable as a river separates St. Mary's from the island, suggesting that the land nearly is part of Missouri. On maps, the land seems fully engulfed by Missouri. Most maps don't even note the channel with water, but merely include a political boundary line. Kaskaskia seems an improbable location for Illinois's first state capital. Now remote, plagued by low land that constantly floods, and insular, Kaskaskia was once a vital part of early French settlement of the Mississippi River valley.

In 1673, Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette claimed the Mississippi River valley in this area. In 1675, Marquette visited the site of Kaskaskia and established the mission of the Immaculate Conception. The mission became a church, and the settlement around the mission grew into a village with fur trading and farming as prevalent economic activities. In 1703, Kaskaskia was founded as the second village of European settlers in Illinois. By 1752, the population stood at a relatively robust number of 671 residents.

At the advent of the French and Indian War in 1756, French townspeople built Fort Kaskaskia on a hill east of the town, now across the Mississippi River. Residents destroyed the fort to prevent it from falling into British control when the British won. Many residents fled to Ste. Genevieve after the war. Later, the British built Fort Gage in Kaskaskia but lost the fort to Revolutionary General George Rogers Clark in 1778.

Kaskaskia became Illinois territorial capital in 1804. In 1818, the newly-created State of Illinois chose to retain Kaskaskia for the first state capital, although for only two years. The Emigrant's Guide of 1818 states that there were 150 houses standing in the village. Growth would not arrive, however, as the village quickly lost the capital to more centrally-located Vandalia. One notable event happened after the loss of the capital: the establishment of the convent and school for the female school Visitation Academy in 1833. However, the biggest blows to the village's fortune came with terrible floods in 1844 and 1881. The first flood caused great population loss, and the second flood created the river channel that made the land around Kaskaskia into an island. During the period between the floods, Visitation Academy relocated to the city of St. Louis in 1856.

In 1993, flood waters again submerged the island and caused residents to flee. Nowadays, the population of Kaskaskia is about 9 and the population of the island is about 93 people. Kaskaskia still retains its street grid, which carves out blocks punctuated by the few remaining buildings.

One of those remaining buildings is the Church of the Immaculate Conception, built in 1882 and moved to its current site in 1894 after the devastating 1893 flood. A church founded by Marquette now meets only on Saturday afternoons -- strangely diminished in human size but awesome in the length of its existence. The brick building has managed to survive several floods with its Gothic Revival architecture intact.


A long-time parishioner is profiled in the article found here.

A newer building is the home of the church's historic bell, gifted by the King of France in 1741 and known as the "Liberty Bell of the West" since the townspeople rang it on July 4, 1778 to celebrate liberation from British rule.

The old school house is interesting, although badly damaged by flooding and alterations to its fenestration. Boarded up, the brick building is missing much of its interior structure although it has gained a new roof since the 1993 flood. Reuse seems unlikely, although someone is performing enough continued maintenance to ensure survival of the old building.



A few frame and brick homes comprise the rest of Kaskaskia. The wide sight lines of the island ensure views of the church spire and school house framed by expanses of fields. Settlement has come full circle for Kaskaskia, but somehow it endures.

Drinks and Mortar's One Year Anniversary This Thursday

Thursday night marks the first anniversary of Drinks and Mortar, the monthly gathering of people who like to talk about architecture. The gathering began after a group of people who were discussing simple and sustaining ways of connecting those interested in historic preservation, urbanism and architecture decide dto do something to get the ball rolling. For a long time there was no name to the event. One year later, there is a name, a Myspace website, a dedicated coordinator (Claire Nowak-Boyd) and a throng of regulars.

Hope to see you there!

When: Thursday, January 24 from 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.

Where: Grand Hall Lounge, Union Station, Market & 18th streets

More information: Drinks and Mortar

Foreclosure, Crime and Neighborhood Disintegration

According to an article on the CNN website entitled "Crime scene: foreclosure", Cleveland's historic Slavic Village neighborhood is in the nation's top ZIP code for foreclosures. An estimated 800 buildings sit vacant there. The neighborhood has out-of-control crime, correlated to the foreclosure rate. Houses get stripped within 72 hours of being vacated, and aren'ty worth enough money to justify repair. Police are inattentive, and the city can't afford to do much trash cleanup or demolition. People flee in droves, leaving those who remain in fear. Lenders continue to foreclose, with little concern about the effects.

This situation sounds a lot like conditions in north St. Louis in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The article's eerie conclusion reads "as the number of empty lots and abandoned houses grows where houses and residents were once packed in a tight community, there are fewer and fewer neighbors to fight the battle."

(Thanks to Barbara Manzara for the link.)

"What is the City?" Conference at UMSL This Week

Did you know that UMSL is hosting a conference entitled "What is the City?" this Thursday, October 25 and Friday, October 26? The conference examines "urban perspectives in film, fiction, and photography" and is free with advance registration.

Here's the full description:

The Center for the Humanities invites you to join speakers from around the country and St. Louis in examining urban life in contemporary and historical films, fiction, television, and photography. We will discuss examples from London, Chicago, Sarasota, Paris, Los Angeles, Florence, St. Louis, and small towns. The conference presenters are historians, geographers, photographers, film critics, community activists, literary experts, and writers. Engaging in discussion across many disciplines, they will consider ways artistic images and writings shape how we see our cities and those of others.

The schedule and registration form are here.

cities on other planets

I would just like to call your attention to this poem by local writer Aaron Belz: cities on other planets.

(And, at least from my interpretation of it, I'm thinking you can assume a little sarcasm in the tone, so calm down and read it again.)

Hope on Martin Luther King Drive

I spent some of my morning talking with a building owner in the Wellston Loop area. He has big plans for his big building, the former J.C. Penney store at 5930 Martin Luther King Drive. (This is the International style gem designed by William P. McMahon and built in 1948.) He envisions the building as catalyst for rejuvenating the area, and seems optimistic despite acknowledging forty years of neglect of the area and of Martin Luther King Drive in general.

The neglect is formidable. On the drive out to his building from downtown, I passed the sites of a dozen buildings that were demolished within my lifetime and whose details I clearly recall. I passed even more buildings that sit empty, or in use, or in some derelict state between. I passed two buildings with significant recent collapses. I passed one row of flats and a corner commercial building under demolition despite being in good condition. I was overcome with melancholy as I considered that many of these buildings won't survive my lifetime, or even the next decade, and the fifty-odd blocks of a street that supposedly honors to good work of Dr. King will be virtually unrecognizable to me by middle age, and already is unrecognizable to people old enough to recall its heyday.

Even at the time that Franklin and Easton avenues were renamed for Dr. King in 1972, the conditions of the buildings on the street were not great. At the time, some critics felt that the legacy of Dr. King was diminished by placing his name on a street with a sad future. The sad future is now, and the street name certainly seems cynical.

Hopefully, the J.C. Penney building and others on the street will survive, and find good owners, and provide momentum for development along here. Aldermen O.L. Shelon (4th Ward) and Jeffrey Boyd (22nd Ward, including the Wellston Loop), whose wards include most of the street in the city, are pushing for redevelopment that is architecturally sensitive. They can only do what is politically possible, though, before it is up to the market to generate the capital needed to revive sections of the street. May that time come before all is lost on the great street with a great name.

Priorities

As a follow up to my August 9 post, "Young Smart St. Louisans: Where Do They Go?":

Many of my friends talk about having to leave town or at least work in the suburbs to get started in their career field before they turn 40. These are creative people who generate a lot of cultural capital for the city and who proselytize on behalf of city living in St. Louis. If one of them moves, there may be three or four people left behind who moved to St. Louis from the suburbs or another city with persistent needling from the person headed out of town. Their concerns are met with a cold shoulder from the old guard who hold public offices, board of directors slots and corporate and nonprofit management positions, who remain set in the ways that knocked St. Louis from one of the nation's top ten largest cities to number 52.

Corporations like the St. Louis Cardinals and AT&T frequently complain about how they have to consider leaving town to fully realize their growth. Their concerns are met with a mad dash by politicians and civic "leaders" to arrange for public subsidy and a guilt-trip for the general public who are not supportive enough. While these companies sometimes create jobs, their primary purpose is to create profits. Their contributions to the region's economy are measurable, but their presence doesn't often attract the people who make St. Louis a fun place to live.

I'm not suggesting that St. Louis could survive as a big city without major companies located in the city. I am suggesting that we will never grow until we work to retain the smart young people who are seeking to invest in the city's future. The response of the civic elite to the possible drain of both people and companies is telling: they value economic wealth over cultural wealth. (No wonder why we have civic monuments as ugly as the Edward Jones Dome and why reopening Kiel Opera House was never a pressing civic goal until a developer stepped in to spearhead the effort.)

Things have to change -- for St. Louis' sake. Other cities won't complain if things stay the same here.

Park Space Isn't All That BJC Threatens

If BJC gets to lease part of Forest Park, can the city not require them to reopen Euclid Avenue to through traffic? I am very disturbed that the city would contemplate leasing part of a public park to a private entity for new construction, but I am even more upset that the city has already granted BJC de facto ownership of public thoroughfares through their "campus."

The park space issue raises a huge red flag with the voters, who overwhelmingly seem to oppose it. I suppose park space is obvious community space that people generally value. Street space, much more fundamental to building good neighborhoods, is also public space and worthy of defense. Yet few people defend streets against closures, cul-de-sacs and such. In fact, some vocal Forest Park Southeast residents oppose the proposed new BJC lease as vocally as they call for making some culvert-pipe barriers permanent closures with gates or walls.

BJC's rampant expansion is creating a problem far worse than, although reflected in, the proposed lease: the creation of a virtual citadel that will sever connections between the Central West End and Forest Park Southeast (or "The Grove"). This is a terrible thing for FPSE, which is showing miraculous signs of recovery and the resurgence of the Manchester Avenue commercial district. That rebound will suffer if people cannot find FPSE or get to it quickly from other neighborhoods.

If Mayor Francis Slay wants to continue his public-defying embrace of the lease, he ought to demand that BJC provide some thing other than money in return. He needs to make sure that BJC stops closing streets and stops building parking garages that have no street-level retail or office space. Taylor Avenue in particular is a major connector between the CWE and FPSE, yet BJC treats it like their service alley and rush-hour freeway. The worst buildings, garages and lots face Taylor -- yet Metro is relocating the Central West End MetroLink station entrance to Taylor from Euclid.

Save our park, and restore our streets!

The South End of Old North

The southern end of Old North St. Louis -- which includes the National-Register-listed Mullanphy and Sts. Cyril and Methodius historic districts -- has been recently cut off from the more vibrant part of the neighborhood by two unfortunate grid-busting, suburban-style housing projects and cut off from downtown by vacant lots, fast food restaurants and automobile and truck yards. Demolition has been rampant, and truck-related businesses own many buildings here. Speculators have seized some of the area, including an impressive half-block owned by Blairmont Associates LC. There is one city block -- bounded by Tyler on the south, 13th on the west, Chambers on the north and Hadley on the east -- where not a single building stands.

Yet the last few weeks have seen signs of life no one could have predicted: a side-gabled, two-and-a half-story house at 2111 N. 13th Street that is the last building on its block is undergoing renovation; someone purchased an LRA-owned building at 1723 N. 13th Street in March and has already made progress on rehab; the owner of a corner tavern at the southeast corner of Howard and 14th streets has taken down part of a brick wall for relaying. These rehabs are by no means historic, and in the case of 2111 N. 13th, maddening for a preservationist to observe. Yet given the economy of that end of Old North, even these projects are somehow comforting -- rather than crumbling shells, we have two bad rehabs to critique. (We will need to go a long way before even contemplating local district standards on acceptable alterations.)

The strangest event lately had to be the revival that took place over the weekend on the south end of that totally-vacant city block. A church group threw up a tent, put out folding chairs and a port-a-potty, and brought in preachers and bands. The scene was almost surreal, especially amid the stormy weather of the last few days.

Hopefully, someone will make a more long-term investment in that block, which would make a great location for modern infill housing. In fact, I would love to see both the 1970s-era Murphy-Blair Apartments and the Bristol Place Townhouses developments fall to the wrecking ball for a large-scale infill project. With vacant land to the north of both projects along Monroe Street, a new project with restored street grid would meet the North Market Place redevelopment project. With rehab of the remaining historic buildings in this area, reclamation of the Blairmont land for responsible use, and the stabilization of the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, this end of Old North would blossom.

It's comforting that a few good things are happening despite the barriers of the two housing projects. Yet there's no way much else will happen until the barriers are removed.

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.

Model Slums

Model Railroad Slums

Prepare to be amazed. I used to build urban model railroad neighborhoods like this myself, but with slightly less ability than this young man. Once I built a model of an entire section of downtown St. Louis, including Busch Stadium, from cardboard and file folders. Nothing like the model shown here, though. (Thanks to Sarah Weeks for the link.)