The Bel Air East - Loss of a Mid Century Modern Hotel

Last Saturday, I attended a picnic under highway 70 near where it crosses Washington Avenue, cutting of Downtown from Laclede's Landing and the Arch Grounds, creating a mile long dead zone. I was facing the lower levels of the Hampton Inn which fronts on Washington. After the picnic, a friend and I were walking up 4th Street and I was lamenting about how the Hampton Inn used to look when Trader Vic's was there and before the building was re-muddled and completely re-faced with Styrofoam and fake stucco.

The Bel Air from 4th Street. The cleared site behind the striped plywood wall
would soon be occupied by the Mansion House complex. Also in this photo are
St. Louis' old Granitoid street lights. A few years after this photo was taken
someone had the bright idea to replace all of these with the cobra heads that everyone hates. I have heard that the Granitoid poles were thrown in the river.

That night I searched online to see if I could find some images of what I remembered from childhood... and found these photos from an online forum about "classic & modern Polynesian Pop". Yes, such a forum actually does exist, and thankfully so. The building was much more stunning than I remembered. I remembered the base with Trader Vic's and that was about it. The Bel Air East, which was completed in late 1962 was a great example of the tower on a podium concept that was popular in the Modern era and executed in a manner unequaled anywhere in St. Louis. My friend commented that it looked like it was straight out of Florida, and with good reason, because there simply was nothing else like it here in St. Louis.

The Bel Air's brightly colored draperies brought a little South Beach to St. Louis

Sadly in 2001, the year which had been immortalized as the ultimate "future", the hotel was bought by an operator who lacked vision, who then hired an architect with even less vision. Instead of capitalizing upon what was there, they foolishly tried to take the building into the past, attempting to emulate the tripartite classical revival structures farther west on Washington such as the Renaissance (former Statler) and Renaissance Suites (former Lenox) hotels... and doing a poor job of it.

I could not find a good shot of the entrance to Trader Vic's on
Washington, but this menu is a good rendering of how it appeared

Even worse, they spent a lot of money to ruin this building, $14,000,000 according to the City's website. While in 2001 the Bel Air's age was only 39 years old, eleven short of the typical age of eligibility for listing on the National Register, a building can be eligible for listing if it is considered of "exceptional importance". In 2004 the brutalist style Pet Milk Building several blocks south of the Bel Air was listed on the National Register at the young age of 35. If the developers had chosen restoration, they could have been eligible for both state and federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits totaling 45% of eligible costs.

The interior of Trader Vic's which closed in 1985

Instead of creating a hip trendy hotel catering to the creative class, like say the soon to open Indigo Hotel on Lindell in what was the Bel Air West, we ended up with one that looks more like a place that over the hill conventioneers go to hibernate. Unfortunately this rare example of Mid Century Modern was lost. Will we lose another one at Lindell & Taylor?