SLPS Superintendent to Speak at Mann Elementary Tuesday Night

St. Louis Public School Superintendent Dr. Kelvin Adams will be hosting a meeting this Tuesday evening, March 31 at Mann Elementary to discuss the school's future. The meeting will be at 6pm in the school's relatively new (15 years old) gymnasium east of the main building at Juniata and Oak Hill. On March 12th, the Special Administrative Board voted to adopt a plan that would close Mann in 2011 and replace it with a new school, which is rumored to be built on the site of the existing historic school resulting in it's demolition.

We encourage everyone interested in preserving Mann Elementary and keeping a model neighborhood school that works intact to attend Tuesday to show your support for taking Mann off the closing list for 2011.
Last Tuesday evening, members of the Alliance to Preserve Mann Elementary, were given an extensive tour of the interior of the historic school building, the original portion of which dates to 1901. We were impressed with the overall excellent condition of the school's interior. The building has generally been well maintained, and is exceptionally clean. The hardwood floors and granite base moldings found throughout the halls and classrooms shine bright enough to see a reflection.
The building's windows look almost new, and that is because they are. They were completely replaced with exact replicas of the originals in 1991 as part of a $100 million district wide renovation bond issue. The school's gymnasium is also almost new. It was completed in 1994, at a cost of $1,360,500.00 according to City real estate records.
Like any school of its age with older systems, the building could use an overhaul of it's HVAC system as well as electrical and plumbing upgrades. This presents an opportunity to install new systems through a renovation that would be more energy efficient and reduce operating costs.

Beyond the excellent condition of Mann's physical structure, there is the fact that the student enrollment is near capacity. The school is part of the EMints program which provides a computer for every two students. Additionally, students at Mann are able to participate in Oasis tutoring, Faithful Friends, and 40 students are enrolled in Urban Future programs. Mann is a model neighborhood school that should be removed from the Closing list.

Downtown St. Louis Loses Street Level Transit

One of the last Metro Buses in the CBD at Olive & 9th in front of The Paul Brown

Starting Monday, March 30th, Downtown St. Louis will be without street level transit for the first time since before the Civil War. According to the St. Louis Public Library, the Missouri Railway Company opened the first streetcar line running on Olive Street between Fourth & 10th Streets on July 4th 1859. By 1903 a massive web of streetcar lines fanned out from the dense grid of the CBD. Eventually buses replaced the streetcar lines, but the pattern of lines emanating from within the CBD core remained.

Streetcars on Olive Street sometime around 1915-1920

As part of Metro's massive service cutting measures to deal with the failure of Prop M by St. Louis County voters last November, Metro Buses will no longer travel through Downtown's Central Business District east of Tucker Boulevard. Instead, all buses headed Downtown will be routed to the 14th Street Transit Center south of Savvis Center. From there anyone wanting to go into the CBD will need to transfer to MetroLink. Apparently Metro does not feel that a concentration of 90,000 workers and 10,000+ residents does not warrant Metro Bus service Downtown. Never mind that St. Louis City passed it's portion of Prop M in 1997! and has not been able to use it!

A Call to Arms - Join us next Tuesday, March 24 at the state capitol to lobby for Historic Tax Credits

As most if not all of you are aware, the Missouri Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit is currently under attack with proposed legislation in the Missouri Senate.

Senate Bill 45 otherwise known as the "Quality Jobs Act" has been laden with amendments which would cap the Historic Tax Credit and END THE PROGRAM after June 30,2011.

Other Missouri tax credit programs would be affected by this bill including: Brownfields, Low Income Housing, Neighborhood Preservation, TIFs and many others.

A growing group of architects, preservationists, developers, and others whose business would be affected by the passage of this bill are planning to go to Jefferson City next Tuesday, March 24th to push for removal of caps and sunset provisions for the Historic Tax Credit, or otherwise prevent the bill from moving forward as currently written.

Please consider joining us at the state capitol to show our support for the Historic Tax Credit. We will be meeting at 9:45 am on the ground floor of the capitol at the west entrance near the cafeteria. Then we will break off to talk to the individual senators. For more information please contact Anne Suggs with the Missouri Historic Preservation & Economic Development Coalition at 314.621.6115

Below is the pasted text from SB45 pertaining to the Historic Tax Credit. For a full summary of the bill, click here. If you can't join us, please take time on Tuesday to e-mail, call or write your state senator, representative and governor.

_______________________________________________________________________________
No more than fifty million dollars in historic preservation tax credits may be authorized in fiscal year 2010. The act prohibits the authorization of historic preservation tax credits after June 30, 2010, unless a fiscal year allocation is made. Such allocation cannot exceed fifty million dollars per fiscal year. The department of economic development is required to limit tax credit authorizations for St. Louis and Jackson Counties, and the City of St. Louis to the percentage of each fiscal year's allocation that each such city or county bears to the state's population. Applications denied due to the limitations provided under this act will receive priority under the next fiscal year's allocation. No more than twenty-five thousand dollars in
historic preservation tax credits may be awarded per project for residential
rehabilitation projects. No historic preservation tax credits may be
authorized after June 30, 2011. (Section 253.550)
____________________________________________________________________

Thursday's Post-Dispatch had a very good editorial on the situation, read it here.

One landmark that should go away - Envisioning better connections to the Arch Grounds and Riverfront districts

The elevated lanes just north of the Arch Grounds

Memorial Drive and the Depressed Lanes below which carry
only 4 lanes of traffic - the same as the New River Bridge

Rarely do I promote demolition on this site, but this is one structure whose removal would vastly improve the urban landscape. For as long as the Gateway Arch has graced St. Louis, Interstate 70 has functioned as both a physical and psychological barrier between the City and it's iconic symbol as well as the riverfront beyond. Also cut-off from Downtown are the historic Laclede's Landing and Chouteau's Landing districts to the north and south of the Arch.

The space under the elevated lanes has about the same ambiance as that
under the St. Louis Centre bridges, but this extends for several blocks

In what is a very unusual arrangement, the National Park Service owns the land under the interstate and to the western boundary of Memorial Drive (formerly 3rd Street) and leases it to MODOT. In approximately 2015, construction will likely be complete on the New Mississippi River north of Downtown St. Louis officially re-routing I-70 and a good portion of it's traffic to the East Side from its current alignment west of the Arch Grounds to the Poplar Street Bridge. Currently the plan is to keep the current highway between the New River Bridge and the PSB and simply re-name it I-44.

The view into Downtown at the end of the Eads Bridge. Welcome to St. Louis!
We can do better than this, right?

Since traffic will be reduced on this stretch of roadway, however there could be a better solution: Eliminate the depressed and elevated structures and merge the lanes with Memorial Drive as an attractive landscaped urban boulevard. This may sound extreme, but this same concept has been accomplished in cities across North America including Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, Milwaukee, and several others. Take a look at some examples here.

The former Embarcadero Freeway created a wall around San Francisco
Photo from Wayfaring.com

The Embarcadero today after removal of the freeway

Currently the National Park Service is going through a planning process to adopt a new General Management Plan which will guide the management as well as potential improvements to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (the Gateway Arch and surrounding grounds) for the next 15-20 years. Through midnight Monday, the NPS is taking public comments and ideas to help them finalize the Draft General Management Plan which lists several concepts and alternatives. None of the concepts currently include looking at changes to I-70 except a limited "lid" over a portion of the depressed lanes. This would only solve a small portion of the problem of the I-70 barrier, and leave the oppressive elevated highway structure un-touched.

Separation anxiety. The proposed "Lid" focusing only on three blocks
would do nothing for the Olive Street corridor and blocks north

If you would like to see a more visionary plan for the areas bordering the Arch Grounds (such as removing the freeway) or of you have ideas for the grounds themselves, please take a moment to fill out the on-line comment form and submit your thoughts.

Ittner's Mann Elementary Threatened With Closure and Demolition for a Replacement School

Horace Mann Elementary School was designed by St. Louis Public Schools Commissioner of Buildings William B. Ittner. and was constructed in 1901 at the corner of Oak Hill and Juniata to serve the Tower Grove South neighborhood. Now 108 years later after the surrounding neighborhood has seen a resounding resurgence in the last 15+ years like many neighborhoods built on rehabbing and preservation of the existing solidly built masonry housing stock, the St. Louis Public Schools is threatening to close the school and likely demolish it simply to build a new structure at the recommendation of an out of town consultant (MGT) and the Superintendent!


Mann Elementary was one of a series of schools built in 1901 which debuted Ittner's revolutionary E shaped open-plan which features a daylit corridor with classrooms on one side, and alternating wings of additional rooms and open courtyards on the other side which brings ample daylight into the corridor (see this StL Mag article for a brief overview of Ittner's legacy). The building's National Register nomination form prepared in 1990 by Landmarks Association lists the building's interior features such as hardwood floors, oak doors, transoms & railings, original light fixtures, leaded glass entrance transoms and surrounds all intact and in good condition. St. Louis Brick's recent post about the proposed closing of Mann has several close-up photos of details from Ittner's drawings which are on display in the building.


MGT's Facility Management Plan is obviously biased against historic school buildings. The plan recommends abandoning buildings that need upgrades in systems or that are considered not energy efficient due to single pane windows, older hvac systems and other factors which are common in the older buildings. It makes no mention of the options available to upgrade older buildings to become energy efficient and meet today's needs. Instead, on top of closing the historic schools, they recommend replacing groups of closed schools by building two new elementary schools. Their recommendation called for a new school "in the vicinity of" Shenandoah (which threatened that historic building), but in the more recent Superintendent's recommendations, a new school could replace the historic Mann building.


If Mann were to close, SLPS is making a huge mistake in assuming that everyone will simply make the move to a new school outside the neighborhood (there is no other open land in the area). If a new school were built on the site, school service would be interrupted for a full year at least. The largely immigrant population of families that attend Mann are not going to stick around and wait, they will simply move to St. Louis County. This trend is already occurring where other schools are threatened with closure, so not only is the Special Administrative Board threatening to destroy the public school system, they are directly causing an erosion of the population gains that the City has enjoyed over the last several years (the first growth in decades). Additionally, Mann hosts many additional programs that serve the students and community, which is the exact type of model school that the school board claims that they want.


In MGT's facilites study, they claimed that Mann could accommodate 390 students. The problem with their methods is that MGT counted gymnasiums, art and music classrooms as additional capacity, which doesn't reflect reality since elementary students spend the majority of their day in their primary classroom, so counting gyms, art and music rooms does not add up. According to the Superintendent's recent recommendations, the number of students that Mann can accommodate is 325 students, and with a current enrollment of 275 students it is used to 84% of capacity. This is one of the highest scores in usage efficiency, so why would you close a school that is the closest to full capacity?


This Thursday, March 12th, at 6:00 pm the Special Administrative Board will meet to consider the Superintendent's recent recommendations. The meeting will be held in the gymnasium of the Gateway School on North Jefferson. Please consider coming to show your support for keeping Mann Elementary (and other neighborhood schools) open and intact.

The Loss of the William Stix & Elias Michael Schools

The William Stix Elementary and Elias Michael schools were both designed by Rockwell M. Milligan who followed William b. Ittner as Commissioner of Buildings for the Board of Education from 1917 until his death in 1929. Stix was opened in September 1921 and was named for William Stix who was a co-founder of Rice-Stix Dry Goods, which built and occupied the Merchandise Mart on Washington and two annex buildings on St. Charles which are now the 10th Street Lofts and the 1015 Locust Buildings.

A side view of the Stix School

The Michael School was opened in September 1925 and was named for Elias Michael, a prominent civic leader and member of the Board of Education. His wife Rachel Stix Michael founded the Missouri Occupational Therapy Association and after her husband’s death was instrumental in establishing the Elias Michael School for Crippled Children in his memory. The building was the first public school built specifically for children with physical disabilities.

The Michael School was located at the southeast corner of Forest Park Boulevard and Euclid Avenue. The Stix School was just south of Michael and terminated the vista of Parkview Place as it made a slight jog south at Euclid. Today Parkview Place is terminated by what seems to be the building replacement option of choice in St. Louis, a parking garage.

The corner of the Michael School at Euclid & Forest Park

Here is an overall photo of the Michael School from the intersection of Forest Park & Euclid from the Missouri History Museum collection.  The Stix School can be seen behind.

In 1995 BJC and SLPS a land swap deal was stuck in which BJC would secure ownership of the Stix and Michael Schools and SLPS would have a new Stix School built largely at BJC's expense on land BJC owned at Tower Grove Avenue and Highway 40. In 1997 the new school was completed and in the fall of that year both historic Stix and Michael Schools were demolished. The Michael School's programs were transferred to the then recently built Gateway School on Jefferson.

A large new parking garage was immediately built on the Stix site and somewhat overlapping the Michael site. The eight story Parkway Hotel was then built at the corner of Forest Park and Euclid on the remaining Michael School site. A few years later BJC demolished a small three story building east of the hotel and proceeded to pave a surface parking lot.

The parking garage now terminates Parkview at Euclid

There is no doubt that BJC needed space for expansion. As part of an ongoing building program at the BJC complex a large parking structure that had spanned Parkview Place was demolished and the 14 story Center for Advanced Medicine was built on that site.   New parking was needed to replace the demolished garage and there was an obvious need for hotel lodging adjacent to the hospital complex.

A 1995 aerial view showing the location of the two schools

The same aerial view today

Unfortunately there was failure with both SLPS and BJC to see the value of the historic school buildings.  The School Board swapped the historic buildings for a school knowing that they would be demolished setting a dangerous precedent.  BJC failed to make any attempt to incorporate the historic buildings or even portions of them into the new programmatic need to be built on the site.

The Parkway Hotel at Forest Park & Euclid

Sometimes it takes out of the box thinking to creatively incorporate historic structures into contemporary needs. In this case, the parking structure could have been built to the east of the Stix and Michael Schools and extending onto the parcel that is now surface parking. The Stix School could have been renovated as an extended-stay lodge to house families who need to stay near the hospital. The classrooms would have been an ideal size for the small apartment style units in this type of lodging. A new hotel tower could have been constructed on top of the one story Michael building by coring out the center of the building and incorporating the facade and exterior rooms into the lobby and Applebee's restaurant space. A garage entrance as well as the bridge to the Center for Advanced Medicine could have been slipped between the two historic structures.  Admittedly, the Michael School was fairly utilitarian compared to Stix, and having the hi-rise hotel right on the corner is attractive from an urbanistic standpoint, but the parking garage is no replacement for the Stix School.

A diagram of how the hotel and garage could have been 

developed with the existing buildings

The loss of the Stix and Michael Schools are just one more example of the general lack of stewardship for the irreplaceable historic SLPS buildings by the Board of Education in recent memory. With a Facilities Management Plan written by an out of town and out of touch consultant calling for closing and uncertain futures for 30 buildings on the verge of being adopted by the current board, vigilance will be need to avoid repeating the fate of Stix and Michael.  This Thursday, February 26th the SLPS Special Administrative Board will be meeting at 6:00pm at the Gateway School on Jefferson.  The board will likely be voting to adopt the Facilities Management Plan that evening.

1965 Video Offers Glimpses of Lost Downtown Landmarks

Vintage 1965 Super 8 posted recently on Dawn Griffin's site offers views of several lost or altered Downtown landmarks and a rare view of an unfinished Gateway Arch.  The footage begins heading east on Market in front of Union Station with a view of the Blue Cross building, an international style gem that received an unfortunate re-muddling in the 1980's. Next there is a glimpse of the Buder Building which stood at 7th & Market until its implosion in 1984.  Then there is a sweeping view of the construction of the first Busch Stadium Downtown followed by a closer view of the unfinished Arch.

The video then jumps to Forest Park, all of which is still in existence with a somewhat dumbed down re-built of the fountain at Government Hill.  Thanks Dawn!