Villain Plots to Melt All of the Brick in St. Louis

The annual frenzy of the 48 Hour Film Project is over, and I am catching up on submissions. One of interest to readers is the Thomas Crone-directed Tales of Templar, in which a villain plots to melt all of the brick in St. Louis. Tales of Templar includes scenes filmed at the fire-damaged Fourth Baptist Church in Old North St. Louis and the Nord St. Louis Turnverein in Hyde Park. If only Templar had been around to stop the blazes that struck those buildings!

'27 Tornado Survivors on Montgomery Street

I have long admired the group of four narrow-faced, one-story houses on the 3000 block of Montgomery Street. Located on a little wedge between Garrison and Coleman streets, the four houses seem to comprise a coherent group of small shaped-parapet dwellings. The western two, 3005 and 3007 Montgomery (left), have front entrances. The other two, 3001 and 3003 Montgomery (right), have side entrances and paired windows on their faces. All are clad in machine-rolled, rough-faced brown brick with abundant white bakery brick patterns. Raised basements provide well-lit potential additional living space.

The setting is enhanced by the placement of the houses not parallel to Montgomery Street, but parallel to the side lines of the irregular lots on which they sit. Thus the houses roughly step out from east to west, creating visual interest from the side.

These houses have always been architecturally compatible, but there is a twist -- or twister, if you will. These houses began their days as stone-faced homes built around the turn of the twentieth century. One block west stood the massive Mullanphy Hospital. In 1927, the great tornado ran northeast across the city and struck this block. Like most buildings that survived the disaster, the buildings were rebuilt using contemporary masonry rather than restored. While the repairs are within a common range, the grouping and the deliberate effort to match all four houses is unusual.

While not stone-clad, the three one-story, flat-roofed houses one block to the east on the south face of Montgomery Street give some indication of the form of the re-clad homes. The decorated wooden cornices were common on these small raised-basement houses built across north city roughly from 1880 through 1905. Often the high porches sheltered stairwells that led to basement apartments. The three houses pictured above are now so decimated by brick thieves that their demolition is inevitable.

Alas, the four houses to the west are also vacant -- three owned by Northside Regeneration and one by the Land Reutilization Authority -- and unprotected by landmarks status or demolition review. However, they are not sitting alone.

The four tornado survivor, marked by a yellow asterisk on the map above, are adjacent to blocks built up again by Habitat for Humanity. The four small historic houses could some day sit amid a rebuilt neighborhood, reminding people of a time when the city had the fortune and foresight to rebuild even small one-story houses. The brick-rustled neighbors here bear a strange resemblance to houses depicted in photographs of 1927 tornado damage. Houses that went through the tornado and back remind us that even the worst disaster is not the end of the world -- not even necessarily the end of a building.

Why Save This Building?

This two-story reinforced concrete industrial building stands on N. 25th Street just north of Sullivan Avenue in St. Louis Place. It is owned by Northside Regeneration LLC. Beyond some concrete block infill of first floor window openings and a painted southern elevation, the building does not look much different than it did when built some 90 years ago. In the parlance of the National Register for Historic Places, the building substantially retains its integrity.

Of course, the building is more isolated than ever, and across 25th Street is the hulking Sullivan Place building with its gated grounds. No one could claim that the building is essential to preserving a historic built landscape. So why would anyone preserve it?

The first reason would be moral imperative. One version of that is tracing the building's use to a significant company or product. That is unlikely. Another moral imperative, which all good people now claim to endorse, is the mantra of "sustainability": demolition is like driving an Escalade to work every day. Right? A tangential moral imperative is that with each demolition, we lose more of St. Louis itself, thus diminishing the physical city itself. Readers know that I meditate on this idea frequently, and sometimes inconclusively.

The other reason that this building would be saved is economic. Someone may find a new purpose, or resurrect an old purpose, for the building. Reuse of this building might reduce capital needs of start-up. That's the kind of reuse that I would love to see envisioned for a relic like this. More likely, though, redevelopment here will be incentive-driven. In fact, it already is.

The irony is that not long ago this building was still in continuous use, despite loss of context, age and general neighborhood decline. It was just an industrial building in a neighborhood. Now, due to conjoined acts of government and capital, its existence is in question. Many prettier buildings are in the same situation, but advocacy is far easier for them. Who sees the potential here? Well, the potential was already realized. Don't forget that. Jobs were located here. Taxes generated. Not much is required to return the building to taxable production. Perhaps in our political economy those facts justify preservation better than any other.

Have You Seen These Interior Pediments?

Photograph by Landmarks Association of St. Louis, 1982.
Have you seen this lovely dentillated pediment? It once was the crown of a door casing inside of the first floor hall of the James Clemens, Jr. House at 1849 Cass Avenue in St. Louis.

The four pediments from the center hall door openings are now missing, as these photographs show.





However, the pediments were in place in the following photographs taken by this author on May 13, 2007.



If you have any information about these stolen pediments, please drop a line. Architects at Klitzing Welsch (314-772-8073) are looking for them. It's urgent, too -- they are preparing plans for rehabilitation and need them back! Even one would be very helpful.

Some Frame Houses in the Ville

The Ville has lost plenty of buildings in the last fifty years, but remarkably many frame houses remain from early development. Still, the frame houses don't last long when abandoned. The photograph above shows three similar frame houses in the 2500 block of Whittier (across from the old Homer G. Phillips Hospital) back in 2004.

The house at 2420 Whittier dated to 1885 and was built by James Chadwick, an active developer in what was then known as Elleardsville. This house was for sale in 2004. The original clapboard siding was still in place under later asbestos tile siding. Now it is a burned out pile of building debris. The fire revealed that the original wooden shingles were still present under layers of newer roofing!

The only house remaining from the group of three that I photographed in 2004 is the house in the middle at 2518 Whittier. The date of construction is unknown, but it was probably built around 1885 too. In 1906, it was moved to this site. Today it is well-kept (although the original siding is either missing or covered) and occupied. The house at 2518 Whittier is included in an architectural survey of the Ville neighborhood conducted by Lynn Josse and myself under the supervision of the city's Cultural Resources Office.

A (Legitimate) Look Inside of the Clemens House

On Sunday, Landmarks Association of St. Louis wrapped up its annual Preservation Week with a tour of the James Clemens, Jr. House at 1849 Cass Avenue in St. Louis Place. That's right -- Landmarks offered a tour of a vacant building! While there have been many "before" tours of historic St. Louis buildings, none has offered a look at such an early phase of a rehabilitation project.

Landmarks Association Executive Director Jeff Mansell welcomes the crowd along with Dan Holak of Robert Wood Realty and David Lorentz of Klitzing Welsh.

Developers Robert Wood Realty and McEagle along with architects Klitzing Welsh Associates bravely threw open the door (okay, unscrewed the plywood) to the James Clemens House to the public for Landmarks. There was a small charge, a limited number of tour spots and a mandatory liability waiver, but all of those were necessary to make the tour work. Hopefully it can be offered again!

The developers started the tour by explaining the redevelopment plan, which calls for senior apartments in the mansion, dormitory and first floor of the chapel with an educational use in the chapel space. Nothing has been firmed up about the chapel use yet, but the original volume of the space will be restored for the first time in generations. The use of the chapel will allow for public access to the grounds, which will be opened up by removing the brick wall (built in 1887 and somewhat removed now) and building an iron fence similar to the original long lost fence on Cass Avenue. The Clemens House complex will again be easy to locate, and will open up a relationship with its neighborhood once more.

The apartment use precludes public access to the mansion and its lavish interior, and will entail some tricky accommodations like kitchenettes and bathrooms in the first floor parlors. (The dormitory is a perfect fit.) However, the project will follow the Secretary of the Interior's standards for historic rehabilitation, and all original fabric will be retained. The extensive cast iron work will be refurbished and missing parts replicated (albeit probably in a fiberglass-based casts). I have yet to thoroughly study the details of the rehabilitation, and will continue to observe.


The tour offered a very limited view inside. Visitors entered at the rear of the dormitory and proceeded about fifteen feet from the front door. Structural problems in the partly-collapsed chapel and the house itself precluded further adventure. Still, what was open was lit up brightly than ever. This photographer was able to re-do some old clandestine photography!

Paul J. McKee, Jr. was prominent in the group, and was freely talking with guests. There is a long road ahead for the developer's Northside Regeneration project, and many unanswered questions. (This post is not about them.) Yet the one certain fact is that McKee is starting the project with rescuing the James Clemens House, and that has become the early symbol of the project. It's easy to point out how much this move benefits McKee -- but easy to guess that it's not necessarily the first move he wanted to make.

The truth is that those who benefit the most from the rehabilitation of the Clemens House, however, are residents of surrounding St. Louis Place who have long suffered from the abandonment in the heart of a largely stable area. Oh -- and everyone who wants St. Louis to have an indelible, storied historic character benefits from saving this city's most architecturally significant pre-Civil War mansion. There are eternal essences that make this city what it is, and their defense should be more fiercely and continually waged than momentary battles. After all, brick walls last longer than fleeting political maneuvers.


As an aside, Landmarks Association of St. Louis is at its best when it offers the community the chance to directly interact with historic architecture in unexpected ways. While its board has spent considerable time, effort and money on the Architecture St. Louis space downtown, the organization's most unique strength remains the ability to forge connections out in the places where we live. Kudos to current Executive Director Jeff Mansell for doing just that with this tour!

Bye-Bye, Corner Commercial

Today I saw that the two-story brick corner commercial building at Page and Walton avenues in Fountain Park was mostly gone, and I snapped this sad scene. The heartbeat of the city always grows a little more faint whenever a corner store gets wrecked. Gone is a point of exchange -- a point for drawing people together, for employment, for tax revenue generation and for provision of goods near people's houses.

St. Louis remains far outside of the relevance of the recently-publicized writings by economist Edward Glaeser. In the New York Times yesterday, Glaeser argued against hard-line preservation: "[i]f a successful city doesn't build, its prices will skyrocket and it can turn into an exclusive, elite enclave."

Perhaps true, but too often in St. Louis we never get to that conundrum. We take down a building and leave its site empty for generations. Not only are we not building, but we are not preserving. Often, physical condition of buildings demands demolition, and I can assent to protecting public safety. Yet the building at Page and Walton was in fine shape. Located in the 18th ward outside of preservation review, however, there was not even a moment's deliberation once the owner applied to take it down. And I don't know the circumstances -- perhaps there is a good reason for demolition.

Yet as I passed the largely intact residential block to the east -- the 4700 block of Page Boulevard -- I thought about how many people would be able to walk to that corner storefront easily. I also thought about how there are no storefronts on the other end of that block. This has been the case for some time, of course, since the corner building was vacant for over 20 years. Yet the past could have been rendered future with rehabilitation. A blocked network of social relations, between residents of Page and that corner store, is now effectively dead.

Preservation here would not have raised prices, but maintained the potential for recreating a beneficial pedestrian experience. The lost building reinforces the high prices in other neighborhood, like the nearby Central West End, that retain their density, walkability and their commercial activity. Also reinforced are prices in other cities where preservation has indeed led to excessively high real estate prices -- but you can read about those in the New York Times.

Harvey Noble Buys Again

The house at 1352-4 Bayard Avenue on May 11, 2010.

Harvey Noble, Vice President of Eagle Realty Company and agent for many of the holding companies used by Paul J. McKee Jr. for his Northside Regeneration project, is back in action. On May 4th, Noble used his shell company Feasible Projects LLC to acquire the house pictured above, located at 1352-4 Bayard Avenue in Fountain Park (18th Ward). After McKee went public with his project, Noble emerged again as the agent for a holding company called Urban Assets LLC as well as six new companies incorporated in February 2009. Those companies are Diligent Property LLC, Feasible Projects LLC, Incentive Properties LLC, Marketable Property LLC, Premises Property LLC and Prudent Investor LLC.

As of last July, Urban Assets owned 230 properties, Diligent Property owned three properties and Prudent Investor owned one. No purchased had been made since then until last week. The properties owned by these companies are located in a wide swath of north city that includes wards 1, 3, 4, 5, 18, 19, 21, 22 and 26. McKee as well as Michael Roberts have denied to reporters having any involvement with the operation fronted by Noble.

The most recent deed reveals little information except that one of the dormant shell company names is now being used. Here's a look at the top of the first page:

And here is Noble's signature on the last page:

The signature line states that Noble personally is the sole member of Feasible Projects LLC. That could be true. Although Eagle Realty is best known as a broker/agent and appraiser used by city development agencies, its officers -- Noble and President Steve Goldman -- have owned property in north St. Louis since the 1950s under various company names. On deeds for McKee's holding companies, Noble signed as "Manager" rather than "Member" of the shell companies.

A New Flounder House in Old North

After nearly 120 years since the last documented flounder house was built in the city of St. Louis -- and so many have gone undocumented, so who knows when the last was built -- the flounder house is back! A new flounder house is under construction in Old North St. Louis on Hebert Street just west of 19th Street. Habitat for Humanity is building the house, continuing its commitment to both green construction and smart modern design. The rendering above shows what the house will look like when completed.

The house prominently displays the characteristic that makes a flounder house a unique building type: a roof that slopes from one side of the building to the other with no offset. Many flounders display this plain, simple slope, a roof form that has been traced back to southern European architecture of the Renaissance. Other flounders have a front hip with part of the roof sloping down toward the front. In the United States, the flounder form has been found mostly in the south. New Orleans, Savannah and Alexandria all have documented flounders. Philadelphia has flounders. St. Louis has as many as 160, but probably had many more at the end of the 19th century. All surviving local examples are brick, but there are frame flounders remaining in New Orleans. For a long time, architectural historians studied the flounder as a phenomenon but recent study has found traceable historic roots and has turned up more examples in a diverse range of cities. Still unknown is why flounders are found some places but not others, and why St. Louis has so many.

Here is what the flounder looked like under construction last week. The juxtaposition with the stately Second Empire home to the west is provocative. Cities need such diversity of forms.

Here's the view of the back. The finish will be a concrete board, so this house will be one of the only frame flounder houses in the city when completed.

There are other flounder houses remaining in Old North. This selection leaves a few out, so go take a look around for yourself to see more.


The one-and-a half-story flounder at 1422 Hebert Street is owned by Paul J. McKee's Northside Regeneration LLC, as is the small side-gabled home next door and a larger brick house at the alley behind 1422. The future of all three sadly remains uncertain.

At 1115 Tyler is a flounder house with a front hip. The roof overhangs an intact two-story gallery porch on the east elevation. The house sits back from the street.

This tall flounder sits on the alley at 1455 Clinton Street. The brown-painted area at top is mortar parging (or covering) over the brick.

The owner of the flounder house at 1905 Dodier applied for a demolition permit last year, but agreed to defer an appeal to the Preservation Board to work on a preservation solution.

This flounder house at 1453 Monroe Street is not long for this world. The south elevation is largely missing and the north elevation has several large holes. The joists have started descending.

Busy Saturday: Open Streets and the 21st Ward Home Repair Blitz

It's an exciting busy day in the city, and an appropriate start to this year's Historic Preservation Month. Open Streets has just wrapped up, and while giving a walking tour on Lindell with Toby Weiss I saw dozens of pedestrians and cyclists taking advantage of the street closure. Can't wait for it to happen again!

Up in the 21st Ward, today is a big blitz of home repair by Rebuilding Together. Alderman Antonio French already has posted a video.



While big rehab projects garner most headlines, most homeowners in the city don't need or can't afford expensive projects. Neighborhood stabilization requires many showcase projects but many more efforts to retain existing residents. Kudos to the volunteers working today in the 21st ward!

14th Street Mall: Almost History

Here's the current view from St. Louis Avenue looking south down the two commercial blocks of 14th Street that once composed the "14th Street Mall." Sidewalks nearly done: check. Street under construction: check. Reopening of 14th Street by the fall: check and double check.

Operation Brightside Blitz Days

Juniata Street looking east toward Roosevelt High School in Tower Grove East.

Dodier Street west of Leffingwell Avenue in St. Louis Place.

The two blocks pictured here both were part of today's Operation Brightside Blitz Day. My neighbors and I were out working on our block this morning. Since there is no such thing as a self-cleaning city, citizen cleaning is essential to keeping blocks looking lovely. Government provides the basic services, but citizens create quality of life. We have to be active stewards of our houses and our blocks. No one is going to clean our alleys and sidewalks for us, even in the most ideal world. There are Blitz days coming up in other areas of the city and you should do your part. There's nothing more rewarding than working with neighbors to make St. Louis look beautiful!

Storefront/Commercial Addition: Ted Foster & Sons Funeral Home

People often ask me about the history of the old, boarded-up funeral home at 1221 N. Grand near Page. This is indeed a curious old building, and it wears clearly its layers of construction history. There is the old house, built in 1895 and tucked away behind the later kinda-sorta Colonial Revival front. The front itself shows its seams, so to speak: there is the 1930s-era first floor, with the scrolled broken pediment entrance and prominent keystones. Then there is the second floor, with slightly different tapestry brick and flat-arch window openings with unmistakable post-World War II metal windows. There is a boxy northern wing and the graceful gated archway on the south, from which a funeral procession would once begin. Tying the whole thing together is a projecting gabled portico, replete with columns topped by authentic Ionic capitals with genuine volutes. There are terra cotta urns on each side of the portico up top.

This is a pretty classy hybrid building, and its history is likewise dignified. This is the former home of Ted Foster and Sons Funeral Home, which had passed its 75th year of business here when it abruptly closed in 2008. When the African-American Foster family took over the old house around 1933, this neighborhood had changed a lot. Now known as JeffVanderLou, this was then called Yeatman or Grand Prairie and the residential population had shifted to being largely African-American. As African Americans migrated to the city, the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood was overwhelmed and African-Americans began moving farther north up toward Cass Avenue.

The Foster family were entrepreneurs and ran a strong business until foreclosure in 2008. the circumstances of the closure remain vague, and the building is now empty awaiting its next life. Perhaps renewed interest in developing this part of time will be a rising tide for this curious dry-docked vessel.

Street and Sidewalk Work Started on 14th Street

Looking north on 14th Street from Warren Street.
On Friday, after long-awaited approval from the Missouri Department of Transportation, street and sidewalk work began on the two blocks of 14th Street once known as the 14th Street Mall. Work should be completed by the fall. Building rehabilitation is nearly complete. Read more on What's New in Old North.

Update on Preservation-Related Legal Cases

San Luis Apartments

On May 5, the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals will hear the Friends of San Luis, Inc. v. The Archdiocese of St. Louis. (Disclosure: This writer is president of the Friends of the San Luis.) The Friends of the San Luis sought an injunction against demolition of the mid-century modern San Luis Apartments so that it could appeal Preservation Board approval of the demolition.

The San Luis Apartments (originally the DeVille Motor Hotel) in 2007.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker, Jr. dismissed the case with prejudice, claiming that citizens who cannot demonstrate financial grievance have no right to appeal actions by the Preservation Board! The building was subsequently demolished but the Friends decided to appeal Dierker's anti-citizen ruling. The city's preservation ordinance, after all, was enacted by the Board Aldermen for the general benefit of all citizens.

A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals will consider oral arguments from both sides on May 5 and issue a ruling at a later date. Jonathan Beck and Ian Simmons represent the Friends of the San Luis, while Edward Goldenhersh and David Niemeier of Greensfelder, Hemke and Gale represent the Archdiocese.

Century Building

A case now five years old, Missouri Development Finance Board vs. Marcia Behrendt and Roger Plackemeier, just took a predictable turn. The cause was set to commence trial on March 15, but the plaintiffs again requested a continuance. Judge Mark Neill granted a continuance, and trial is now set for August 9, 2010.

Vintage postcard view of the Century Building, c. 1910
The plaintiffs -- and this writer himself needed a refresher after such a long time -- are the Missouri Development Finance Board, Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, NSG Developers LLC, St. Louis Custom and Post Office Building and Associates. Their cause? Even a refresher won't quite make that clear. The allegation is that by being willing to file suit against the Old Post Office project to stop the Century Building demolition -- a Dierkerian filing predicated on injury to personal property value -- Marcia Behrendt and Roger Plackemeier somehow were being malicious. Never mind that Behrendt and Plackemeier's suit was dismissed and had no effect on the outcome of the Old Post Office project (although shoddy construction work did).

The seriousness of the plaintiff's allegation keeps getting undermined by constant requests for continuance. Is the goal to be vindicated by a jury or to harass citizens for exercising their legal rights? And why are our city and state governmental bodies still enjoined as plaintiffs, wasting taxpayer money at a time when both levels of government need every cent they can get? Time to drop the suit.

NorthSide

Last week Judge Dierker -- one tie that binds all three cases -- issued the following order extending for one week the deadlines for brief in the suit against the city over the NorthSide redevelopment ordinances:

Upon the request of defendant Northside Regeneration, LLC, and with the consent of the parties, the post-trial briefing schedule is hereby amended to provide as follows: Brief Due Plaintiffs'/Intervenors' briefs 3/26/10 Defendants' briefs 4/12/10 Plaintiffs'/Intervenors' reply briefs 4/22/10.

Plaintiffs can expect a lengthy, colorful ruling from Dierker. Otherwise, speculation is useless. Dierker has a narrow view of citizen rights under development law, so his basis will be whether the plaintiff have proven that their real estate is harmed or devalued under the blighting enacted by the redevelopment ordinance. Dierker has stated in trial that he is not prepared to consider condemnation that has yet to be authorized, and the ordinance avoids explicit authorization.

Architect Discusses Crown Square Project Tomorrow Night

14th Street rehabilitation underway in May 2009.

What: Discussion on the Crown Square Redevelopment
When: Thursday, March 25 at 7:00 p.m.
Where: St. Louis Artists Guild, 2 Oak Knoll Park (directions/map)

The new Architecture Section of the St. Louis Artists' Guild hosts its next meeting tomorrow night.

The featured speaker is architect Rob Wagstaff of Rosemann Associates, who will speak about the challenges faced in the Crown Square project (better known as the 14th Street Mall).

14th Street rehabilitation underway in May 2009.

21st Ward Real Estate

Citizens often complain that St. Louis aldermen are in impediment to selling Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), but Alderman Antonio French (D-21st) is actually trying to help. French has launched a 21st Ward Real Estate website with information about available LRA-owned property in his ward.

Why do people complain? LRA requires a letter of aldermanic support before selling a parcel to an interested buyer, and aldermen often have parcels removed from the sale list when they are needed for community development corporation or private development projects.

LRA also has maintained a rather old-fashioned website with only a handful of properties having photographs. With no dedicated funding for marketing, LRA cannot do more.

That's fine. Alderman French is showing us that LRA marketing is possible without additional appropriation to LRA. Other aldermen or community groups can -- and should -- do what French is doing.

Next Wave of NorthSide Ordinances Delayed

While the thunder of a showy trial on McEagle's NorthSide project has marched along, the next round of redevelopment ordinances specific to the four phases of the project apparently have not. The Board of Aldermen was supposed to consider those ordinances before April 1, but they may not come for some time longer. At least, that's what Jerry Berger tells us:

Most City Hall observers expect McKee and his partners will let the date slip by while the McEagle team continues to acquire properties and wait for answers to his requests for federal and state assistance.

Dale Singer has a sold analysis of the trial in the Beacon. Read it here.

On the matter of federal and state assistance, the city lost its bid for a federal TIGER grant to reconfigure the Jefferson/22nd Street exits downtown. McEagle needs that reconfiguration and a land swap with the Missouri Department of Transportation to start one of the first-phase components of the project.

Fires Plague JeffVanderLou

Last week, on the way to a meeting in JeffVanderLou, I noticed a recently -- judging by scent -- fire-ravaged house on Bacon Street, shown here.

Then, early this week, I learned of a two-night wave of four fires. These fires hit vacant buildings in a small area. The buildings lost to the firebug share two characteristics: all were historic buildings in decent repair and all were vacant and unboarded. Since the location of all but one of these houses is within the footprint of McEagle's NorthSide project, the press has been quick to report these fires, and the loose tongues of conspiracy have been wagging.

The sad fact is that arson claims vacant buildings across north St. Louis every month, and mostly the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its cloaked comments-section pundits take no notice. The culprits in many of these cases are never caught, let alone charged. Neighborhood residents, who know best, generally suspect brick thieves.

Arson on the near north side also is an old problem. In the 1960s, some white property owners fleeing the near north side torched their own homes to collect insurance money. As time moved on, and buildings went vacant, assorted firebugs, vandals, bored teenagers, firework-launching revelers and brick thieves have done more damage. In 1997, Old North St. Louis suffered a rash of arsons that included a massive fire at the five-story former Peters Shoe Company factory just south of Jackson Park (since demolished).

A building on the 1800 block of Bacon Street lost this week. I could not find a pre-fire photograph.

Then there are the fires that never happened. Neighborhood patrols, starting in the evening and sometimes going to the early morning, have kept many buildings standing. Rarely do neighborhoods get the assistance of owners of the vacant buildings, or the busy police department. Still, many people have taken action to prevent senseless destruction of their neighborhood fabric.

What gets lost through arson are indelible parts of city neighborhoods. The brick piles and half-collapsed buildings are easy picking for brick thieves, and not enticing enough to those who enjoy arson. Most targets are buildings in sound condition, that are stores of community wealth. Negligent ownership is definitely a root cause that must be addressed systematically, but the arsonists aren't going to be affected by scorn heaped upon McEagle or the Land Reutilization Authority.

Robbing neighborhoods of community wealth is a base crime. The police and the circuit attorney need to step up efforts to send neighborhood arsonists away for as long as statues allow.

Two houses on the 1900 block of Bacon Street before last week.

Two houses on the 1900 block of Bacon Street this week.

The house at 1721 N. Grand Avenue last week.

The house at 1721 N. Grand Avenue this week.

Two row houses at 3508-10 Cozens Avenue in 2007. The configuration is unique -- the two houses adjoin at the back with a center gangway leading to secondary entrances.

The two row houses this week. The house hit by fire is owned by McEagle.