Last week I learned that what remains of the Winkelmann House at 1930 St. Louis Avenue is being demolished. According to the City's property database, a demolition permit was applied for on June 22nd. Demolition of the remains of the one story west wing, added when the home was converted to a funeral parlor, has mostly been completed, leaving only the beautiful circa 1873 stone facade of the original home standing. Michael Allen of the Preservation Research Office told me that Paul McKee, the buildings owner had given the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation two weeks to come up with a plan to salvage the facade, without chipping in any funding, of course! There have been discussions of producing measured drawings to market the facade for re-use.
Below is a photo from January 2, 2007, just after the cancer of brick theft, which would consume most of the structure, had first attacked the funeral home rear garage addition. Coincidentally, one of Paul McKee's many shell companies had taken ownership in 2006. No attempts were made over the five years of slow degradation to secure the home or prevent further attack on the structure. After the stone facade is salvaged, crated and taken away, nothing will be left but a vacant plot of land and an asphalt lot. So much for Regeneration!
4 comments:
I wrote to Grand Center Inc, hoping that they could reconstruct the facade to fill up a hold somewhere on olive or washington. Could the foundation contact Grand Center too. To have salvaged architecture be a part of the arts district makes sense to me.
Hey, just stumbled upon your blog and I really like that you are capturing buildings. I wish I would have thought of this. Amazing photos; eye-opening and inspiring.
d a n i e l l e | daniellewu.com
I ran across your blog while trying to find photos of the Zoo (Deaconess post), and saw this. I took photos the week of scheduled demolition, and you can see them on my blog - http://wandernwoman.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/stlave/
Love your blog - I commonly feel heartbroken on the portions of our architectural history that are being razed. Someday we'll look back and wish we still had examples of our architectural past. I'll link my post yo your blog when I have a moment.
Thanks Danielle & Danie B!
Danie, your photos are great! My photos tend to be mostly documentary in nature, so its nice to see some creative shots of what is left. I look at the photos of the collapsed floors and find it hard to believe I was walking around on the 2nd & 3rd floors just a few years ago.
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