When the news of Biondi's recently announced resignation filtered through St. Louis, preservationists across the City no doubt cheered and/or let out a sigh of relief. It seemed appropriate though to take a look back at 20 years of demolitions brought about the wave of Biondi's hand. This is by no means a complete summary, and list of buildings that fell under his reign that I don't have photos for is probably as long (or longer) than this post.
While Biondi can be credited with creating in some fashion a more unified campus setting for St. Louis University, the planning or lack thereof and a penchant for the 1960's style "wipe the slate clean" urban renewal mentality has resulted in buildings and a campus, especially south of the valley, that is far removed from its urban context on an isolated island. Hopefully his replacement will see things differently, that a college campus in an urban setting is a positive attribute, not one to fear.
The Olympia Apartments at the northeast corner of West Pine and Vandeventer - Demolished in almost 20 years ago in June 1993. The building was listed on the National Register and would have made an excellent conversion to student apartments. Fortunately SLU decided to divest itself from the much larger Coronado Hotel around the corner on Lindell at Spring.
Vesper Buick Building - Demolished in 1995 for a surface parking lot kitty corner to the surface parking lot on the Olympia site. This National Register listed building by architect Preston Bradshaw was an unusual example of the Spanish Colonial Revival style.
3740 Lindell Boulevard - Demolished in 2008 to provide an open space in front of a proposed expansion of the School of Law that never happened on the main campus. The law school will soon be moving into a donated office building on Tucker Boulevard that is nearing completion of a full renovation for its new use. 3740 Lindell is yet another case for holding the demolition permit until a building permit for the replacement is issued.
Marina Building at the northeast corner of Grand and Lindell - Demolished by SLU in 2002. In 2004 SLU put out an RFP for redevelopment of the site but passed on all of the submissions. It remains a one acre combination sculpture and unofficial dog park at one of the more high profile intersections in the City.
Locust Livery Stable at 3401 Locust - Demolished by SLU in 2007, this historic building built in 1885 fell to enlarge a surface parking lot in an area that has no lack of surface parking lots and is a block away from SLU's huge Compton Garage.
Wagner House at 3438 Samuel Shepard - Demolished by SLU in 2008 and remains a vacant lot just east of the beautifully rehabbed Stockton House.
4040 Washington - Demolished in 1999 and replaced with green space and a small parking lot near the alley (that could have easily fit on adjacent vacant parcels).
4068 Washington - demolished in 2004. Owned for many years and actually marketed by LRA until SLU purchased it... still a vacant lot at the corner of Washington and Sarah today.
4056 Washington - This large mansion had been a run-down boarding house for many years but was purchase and almost completely rehabbed (minus some interior finish work) in 2004. Four years later, SLU purchased the home and immediately demolished it. It is worth noting that the three homes above were less than 500 feet from the homebuilders "Citirama at Gaslight Square", an entire street of new homes that were built and sold (many upwards of $400,000+) starting in late 2004. Many homes in the block of Washington west of Sarah have been fully rehabbed since this development.
Pevely Dairy complex - Demolished in 2012 after the St. Louis Preservation Board denied demolition, but SLU appealed to the St. Louis Planning Commission, who ruled un SLU's favor. The office building at the corner remains as SLU has yet to move forward with the ambulatory care center which it argues absolutely requires every part of the Pevely complex to be obliterated. The complex, which was listed on the National Register had previously been purchased by a developer who planned to convert the buildings into loft apartments. Photo above by Underground Ozarks.
The former Pevely delivery truck garage, one of the buildings demolished.
Single family homes in the 36xx blocks of Hickory and Rutger - Demolished by SLU in 2011 for an initial plan for a new ambulatory care center. When SLU was then able to acquire the Pevely Dairy complex, plans for the yet to be built ambulatory care center moved north. How long will this ground sit vacant? More photos of the homes below.
David P. Wohl Sr. Mental Health Institute - Demolished in late 2011. Just east of the homes above, this was another casualty of the mythical ambulatory care center plan. With its landscaped interior courtyards, this building by architect Gyo Obata was considered cutting edge for the treatment of psychiatric patients when it was opened in 1962, and still served this purpose well until just a few years ago.
The Book House is holding a rally this Tuesday, May 7 at 6:00 pm to save the historic Gothic Revival house that has been threatened with demolition this summer. Please come show your support for this rare structure that has stood on Manchester Road since the Civil War and for the independent book store that has been housed here for over 27 years. RSVP for the rally on Facebook here. Also, a Save the Book House Facebook group has been created.
U-Gas Hill (Rock Hill) is at it again! The city that approved having it's historic namesake, Rock Hill Presbyterian reduced to a pile of rubble and shipped off to Warren County, where it has yet to be re-built, is poised to possibly eradicate another piece of it's history just down the road from the new U-Gas station.
The Book House is an independent book store that for 27 years has been located in an circa 1863 Gothic Revival style house, one of the few surviving in the St. Louis area. The Book House is located at 9719 Manchester, about a third of a mile west of the intersection of McKnight / Rock Hill Road where the U-Gas went up last year. The house faces Manchester but is located on a parcel off of Leonard Avenue and is as accessed off Manchester through another property.
The Book House is designated as a historic landmark by the City of Rock Hill, but next Tuesday, May 7th, the Board of Alderman will consider approval of a proposed redevelopment by Great Northern Land Co. of Michigan that would demolish the historic Book House and several surrounding properties and replace them with a self-storage facility.
Unfortunately the Book House does not own the historic house. Michelle Barron, owner and founder of the business said they had tried to buy the house in recent years, but with tightened lending standards they were unable to get a loan to do so.
A supporter of the Book house started a petition on change.org to save the Book House, which is where I first learned of the issue this past weekend. Please sign the petition and share it with friends. Please email the Mayor of Rock Hill and members of the Board of Alderman asking them to preserve their heritage and to oppose demolition of this historic house. If you are able to, please attend the Board of Alderman meeting on Tuesday, May 7th at 7 pm at Rock Hill City Hall, which is located at 320 W. Thorton Avenue, east off Rock Hill Road just south of Manchester. Also, please like the Book House page on Facebook to stay updated.
UPDATE: A story on stltoday.com is now saying that Rock Hill's Planning & Zoning Committee may not see the proposal until June. Another story on examiner.com has Rock Hill's assistant city planner saying that the developer has not yet applied for re-zoning. It is never too early to email and call Rock Hill officials though to let them know your opinions.
Last weekend while I was running in the West End neighborhood I was stopped cold by the sight above... the remains of a historic house at 6013 Cates that had literally burned to the ground. I recalled that this was the location of a Queen Anne Victorian painted bright orange with an incredibly intricate wrap-around porch. One of several frame houses on this block in the Hamilton Place Historic District, this home had been built by G. T. Parker in 1893.
A view of the house, which was occupied and seemed to be well cared for.
A close-up of the remains. The HUD section 235 house adjacent to west obviously suffered damage covered by the blue tarp. On the other side, a renovated 1909 home by A.A. Fischer also sustained damage to the cornice, the projecting portion of which wraps all the way around the house. From the front it is apparent that the house suffered smoke damage at the second floor. Fortunately, the house has no windows facing west except two small openings infilled with intact glass block, or the damage could have been far worse.
This location is just a few houses down the block from 6044 Cates, an LRA owned house that I posted about in 2008. The Preservation Board denied demolition of 6044 once, but a year and a half later granted approval after LRA had made no real attempt to sell the property and neighbors were tired of living next to a vacant deteriorating house.
Just east of 6044, the another home at 6036 Cates was demolished in 2005 after being vacant since at least 1993 according to City records. Despite these loses, this block of Cates as well as the other two streets in the district, Clemens and Enright are all very stable blocks and with the exception of a few isolated vacancies, are lined with beautiful homes in good condition.
As many of you are well aware, the Missouri Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit program is under threat of a severe cut which is being proposed by Missouri's legislators. Senate Bill SB 120 proposes to reduce the current $140 million cap on Missouri Historic Tax Credits to $45 million, less than a THIRD of the current limit! This would effectively bring historic rehabilitation projects in Missouri to a standstill and cost thousands of jobs at a time when we are trying to re-grow the economy.
SB 120 has passed out of the Senate and is currently being taken up in the House, where it was referred to the Economic Development Committee. The committee can make amendments to the bill. Now is the time to act and call members of the committee as well your own Representative and Senator to urge them to remove the reduction in Historic Tax Credits. Committee member phone numbers can be accessed with the link above. To look up your Representatives phone number click here, and your Senator here.
Please take a few moments to make some phone calls to help prevent this devastating cut to Missouri's most successful tax credit program that has become a model for many other states, including Nebraska which is poised to start a state program this year. Each call only takes about 30 seconds and staffers in each office are keeping count of the number of calls that they get, so each call is important! Tomorrow Downtown St. Louis and T-REx are having a calling party from 4:00 - 6:00 pm at the T-REx offices on the 12th floor of the Railway Exchange Building - 611 Olive Street, above Macy's. Please RSVP on the Facebook event page, which has a much more information.
See below for some talking points.
Here are some talking points to use for your calls to legislators:
- Missouri Historic Tax Credits have produced 43,000 jobs, according to an independent study by St. Louis University —more than any economic development program in the state’s history.
- Historic Tax Credits benefits all Missourians. To date, over 80 communities statewide have taken advantage of the HTC program to revive depressed, both rural and urban.
- Unlike other tax credits, $4 must be invested in an HTC development project for months or years while development is planned and the renovation work progresses. The renovated building must be ready to open and the state must certify the completed project before the before a single dollar of tax credit is issued.
- According to latest figures from the state, Historic Tax Credits generate $1.78 in state personal income taxes, sales taxes, corporate income taxes and miscellaneous revenues for every dollar of tax credits issued.
This afternoon the St. Louis Preservation Board will likely approve demolition of Jewish Hospital at Kingshighway & Forest Park Boulevards and the former Jewish Hospital School of Nursing across Parkview Place, which was previously denied demolition because plans for a replacement building were not in place. Today though schematic plans are in place to replace the buildings with new bed towers for both Barnes-Jewish and Children's Hospitals atop a joined podium that is proposed to span over Parkview Place. Next STL's post from last week has the full agenda for the Preservation Board meeting.
This post is not written to oppose the demolitions, but to reflect on certain aspects of the impending transformation. While the existing building might be able to renovated and retrofitted for uses such as medical office, research or bio-tech space as is being done with the Heritage Building in CORTEX, the old Jewish Hospital and School of Nursing would be very difficult if not impossible to convert into modern functional hospital facilities. Hospitals are required to meet much higher seismic standards than most other uses.
Besides the architecture, one of the most noticeable aspects of the existing buildings are the mature trees and other significant landscaping in the lawns along Kingshighway.
Turning the corner onto Parkview Place, there is a similar mature canopy between the street and the building complex.
The tallest portion of the old Jewish Hospital is only seven and a half stories and set back from all surrounding streets on a tiered base.
While the six and a half story Jewish Hospital Nursing School building does not have a tiered composition along Kingshighway, the setback from the sidewalk and mature trees gives a similar scale along the block face.
Standing in front of the School of Nursing building looking north, the setback, limestone base, red brick upper stories, similar design and detailing as well as landscaping provide a unifying appearance and scale along Kingshighway.
The massing model for the replacement structures show a base of two to four stories with the bed towers rising to about 12 stories, slightly shorter than the Siteman Center at the other end of the block at Euclid. In contrast to newer buildings south of Children's Hospital and the existing buildings to be removed, the base of new structures would not have a setback from the sidewalk. This is similar though to the condition that exists at Queeny Tower, where the parking garage base has no setback. The bed towers on the Kingshighway side would have an angled setback, but would continue up in line with the base along Forest Park Boulevard.
Aerial photos show the existing and proposed buildings at the north end of the hospital campus along Kingshighway. The view above appears to show an angled cutaway in the base (not seen in the massing model) as the building above bridges over Parkview Place.
There is precedent for bridging a building over a street on the medical campus. The Clinical Sciences Research Building at the Washington University School of Medicine bridges over Children's Place, although this portion of the street has been converted to pedestrian use only. The large angled trusses on each side of the building successfully narrow the amount of space covered at the street and also provide very interesting spaces at the interior of the building.
Anyone designing a building over a street though should be cautioned to avoid creating dark and desolate spaces that occur when the width of the bridge is too wide and the height to the underside is too low.
The Jewish Hospital of St.louis began with its first building located at 5415 Delmar Boulevard which opened in 1902 only able to house 30 beds. It was expanded in 1905 with symmetrical wings that brought the bed count to 100. By 1913 this expansion proved too small and land at Kingshighway & Forest Park Boulevards was purchased in 1915 as a site for a new facility. The building on Delmar was purchased by the neighboring Masonic Home who significantly remodeled it and built a twin building to the east. The site is now the location of the St. Louis Regional Psychiatric Stabilization Center, which was built in the mid-1990's.
Above is the architectural rendering by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White of Chicago for the new Jewish Hospital on Kingshighway which was dedicated on May 16, 1926. The School of Nursing was opened three years later and connected to the hospital by a tunnel under Parkview Place.
In 1956 the center wing was added to the hospital and the courtyard facing Kingshighway was infilled with a two story addition. Above is a photo of the new modern lobby created with the expansion.
The idea of going vertical at the Jewish Hospital site along Kingshighway is not new. This study drawing from the late 1960's shows a highrise addition along Forest Park Boulevard and second future tower in front of the original hospital along Kingshighway.
The Schoenberg Pavilion by Schwarz & Henmi Architects was opened in 1974 at eight stories in height, but a newspaper article about the building stated that the building was designed to be expanded vertically up to twenty stories. The Schoenberg building is the only portion of the Jewish Hospital complex that will not be demolished with the new expansion plans.
While Barnes & Jewish Hospitals formed an affiliation agreement in 1992 that led to the creation of BJC and officially merged in 1996, the old hospital building at Kingshighway & Forest Park for many retained the identity of Jewish Hospital. For many Barnes Hospital with the large East & West Pavilions facing Highway 40 still retains its identity. A recent article in the Jewish Light reflects on this passing of the independent identity of Jewish Hospital.
