The Arcade Building

This weekend my parents and I decided to take a look at several of the new condo projects in downtown St. Louis. If I actually have the money in 2009, I would really like to buy one. The projects I took a look at are a little different than a lot of the lofts in downtown St. Louis in that they are old office buildings and not old warehouses/factories.

The first one we looked at was the Arcade Building, which is still being gutted, but the friendly Pyramid Companies sales associate took us up on the roof of the neighboring Paul Brown building where we could take a look down into the light well create by the three buildings on the block, the last one being the Wright Building. The Arcade and Wright buildings are being combined into condos, while the Paul Brown is already apartments.Here is an image of the top of the Wright Building, looking to the east across the top of the building. The Wright was built first, and the Arcade Building was then added.
Above is a picture of the light well of the Arcade Building, with white ceramic tiles facing the very large courtyard. I was surprised at how large the area is; many of the units will have balconies overlooking a lush garden.
Looking to the north, you can see as far as one of the water towers--I'm sorry, standpipes--in the Hyde Park neighborhood.
This last image is looking down into the light well, showing the strange structure that rises out of the center of the building. It will feature a garden on the roof, and a guest quarters for one of the larger condos that will be accessible across its own private roof garden. A very cool building, and it will feature a restored Neo-Gothic shopping arcade on street level.

Alley Bridge

Two Downtown Office Building Lobbies

Many of the old buildings in downtown St. Louis still possess their original lobbies, some of which are breathtaking. Below is the lobby of the Paul Brown Building, recently restored as condominiums.
The stucco work is fantastic in this building, and more importantly, the lobby is lined with shop spaces--in direct contradiction to Modernist buildings with their barren fortress like first stories.
This is the lobby of the Security Building, around the corner on 4th Street. It features a large dome nestled between the two wings of the building.
The lobby features amazing details, drawing from classical architecture but featuring a late Victorian Period exuberance.
Here is a detail of one of the caryatids that line the base of the dome.
Other buildings, such as the Union Trust and Arcade buildings feature beautiful lobbies. The Arcade is now being renovated into luxury condominiums. I can't wait to see the shopping arcade restored to its former glory.

Betrayed by Their Foundations

Nowadays many historic neighborhoods have strict building codes that restrict architectural styles. Builders now find themselves building in styles that were popular one hundred years ago, and many do an excellent job of reproducing historic styles. I was almost fooled by these row houses on the south side of Lafayette Square, even with the near perfect brickwork; after all, maybe they had just done a really great job tuck pointing the old brick.
But as I look on the side of the house, the truth became obvious-the house had a poured concrete foundation. Definitely not from the late Nineteenth Century.

Second Empire Style

I recently attended a wedding in Jefferson City and made it by the Missouri Governor's Mansion. It's a beautiful example of Second Empire architecture.Here is a detail of the front porch of the house. Most typical of Second Empire architecture is the Mansard roof, which is the two roof system, one at a steep pitch usually punctured by windows, and a second gently pitched roof on top. Invented in 17th Century France, it is common throughout St. Louis, and much of America.

BTW, the house in Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Pyscho" is built in the Second Empire style, with some Italianate details.

Lafayette Square

As mentioned in the earlier post on 755, the Lafayette Square neighborhood would have been partially demolished in the construction of the North South Distributor. Ironically, not everyone apparently at the time was opposed to the prospect of interstates surrounding Lafayette Square on three sides. First of all, some homeowners liked the idea of having a cozy little enclave cut off from the city, while other property owners, shamefully abandoning the city, were angry that they weren't going to get money for their property in a state buyout.

Regardless, large swaths of Lafayette Square are still intact, with an interesting mixture of mansions, townhouses and factories that encroached into the neighborhood when it started to decline in the early 20th Century.As can be seen on the side of this townhouse, as the neighborhood declined and the wealthy moved to the Central West End, single family houses became boarding houses. You can actually see a bricked-up side entrance that probably led to the second floor of the house. The owner at one time apparently allowed Domino Sugar to advertise on the side of the then-boarding house. The house is typical Second Empire style, modeled off of French Architecture with its Mansard roof.
Happily, after decades of residential redevelopment in the area, restaurants and bars have moved into the area, making it a true 24 hour neighborhood. Restaurants such as 1111 Mississippi and Sqwires have moved into old industrial buildings that have been renovated into modern spaces.
In distance, behind Sqwires is the old City Hospital, which has been renovated into condominiums. I actually know people who were born in the old hospital before it closed.
Above is what I call dead space, an ill-informed attempt to create a "pocket" park--right across from a gigantic city park, no less. It sits empty, and one can imagine a homeless or indigent person setting up shop in the underused space. Worse, it sits on a corner, which is supposed to be the best places for businesses to thrive. I'm not certain, but I think they're going to build a mixed use store/apartment building on the site.
Here is a detail of the ornate woodwork of the Second Empire style, though I think it's painted a little too garishly, even for the Victorian Period.
Above is one of the grandest mansions in Lafayette Square sitting across the park in splendid glory.
Around the corner from the mansion is the first private street in American, Benton Place.
Here are two examples of houses that were probably built speculatively at the same time on Benton Place.
As is common throughout history, the wealthiest neighborhoods sat on the high ground, enjoying cool breezes and sitting far from malarial swamps and streams that you would find in the old Mill Creek Valley slums. In the distance is a view of Midtown around Grand Center, with the Continental Building dominating the skyline.
Unlike today in suburbia, where houses turn away from the street and line the front of houses with blank garage doors, people in the Nineteenth Century welcomed passersby with elegant details such as this fountain facing Benton Place.

The restoration of Lafayette Square is a triumph of people--not government--taking control of their own neighborhoods and fighting back the crime and despair so common in other areas of the city. The Lafayette Square neighborhood has remarkably low crime for an area so deep in an American city. Residents make it clear that criminals feel out of place, as opposed to neighborhoods where criminals rule the streets after certain hours of the day--if not all day long.

My one quibble with some of the restorations in this neighborhood is that people have cleaned up the houses too much. Some houses are elegant, equipped with modern appliances, but still show their graceful, century old history--their patina. Sadly, other houses have been so over restored that it's difficult to tell that they weren't built ten years ago. Simply a matter of opinion, I imagine.

This is a link to a fascinating map of St. Louis County in the 1860's. What is amazing is how pretty much every road we know today was already there over 150 years ago.

Power Plant

The Union Electric Power plant down along the wharf produces steam for downtown office buildings, but once presumably churned out thick black smoke. What is so interesting about such a utilitarian building is its rich, neo-classical ornamentation. This building was meant to convey not just strength, but a certain level of artistic sophistication now so lacking in most large power plants. Also of interest is the small, triangular cut out of the front of the building, presumably to allow for train tracks to closely abut the side of the building. Admittedly, the building is absolutely filthy, a victim of the high sulfur content of southern Illinois coal. Perhaps if it was renovated into luxury condos it would be returned to its former cleanliness, but I have to admit I like that this old power plant is still chugging along after close to a century of use.

Road Closed

If the highway engineers would have had their way, you could have driven from I-55 north all the way to the McKinley Bridge, all the while avoiding the morass of the Poplar Street Bridge interchange in downtown. As you might have noticed, this fabled "755" was never built. Or was it? Throughout the downtown area various vestiges of the connections to this road were built, but left without much use. Check out this link for the planned route of the so-called "North-South Distributor."

The huge entrance ramps onto Chestnut and from Pine are remnants of the proposed intersection of I-64 and 755. As you can see there is a huge swath of unused land left, and what I call "superfluous concrete." Here is a picture looking north:In the foreground you can see the Market Street Bridge. Here is the roadway looking south towards I-64:Moving further south, you can still see the excess concrete left at the intersection of I-44, I-55 and the proposed 755. The city has given up on building 755, but has attempted to replace the interstate connection between I-44 and I-64 with the Truman Parkway. This will hopefully provide the missing connections at the Poplar Street Bridge approaches. Ever wonder why you can't go from northbound I-55 to westbound I-64, or from southbound I-70 onto westbound I-64? 755 would have provide those links.

The North-South Distributor is a perfect example of a relatively unneeded interstate that out of town engineers tried to foist on the citizens of St. Louis. Luckily, it was never built, and those acres of land the interstate would have eaten are now still available for new tax generating businesses or conveniently located housing for downtown workers. The city and state have a plan for the "22rd Street Interchange" that will hopefully reutilize the vacant land around the west Market area.

Orphaned Houses

I came across these two houses in the so-called McKinley Heights neighborhood of south St. Louis. On the left, the traffic from I-44 rushes past, while across the street--where I'm taking the picture--is the parking lot of an old warehouse turned upscale liquor store. The challenge of reviving some parts of the city is that planners in the past made no effort to keep some neighborhoods as desirable as possible. Perhaps, however, these houses demonstrate the cost of living on the edge of a neighborhood; further in the streetscape is very well preserved and humanly scaled.

Old North St. Louis Mural

I snapped a picture of this mural on the party wall of an old house off of North Florissant Ave in Old North St. Louis:The houses are right up against the sidewalk, creating a sense of community and place. Also, it's hard to beat up and rob someone right outside one of these houses; the owners are more likely to notice a disturbance right outside their doors, thus contributing to safety in the neighborhood. The problem is that too few of these houses are occupied, leaving "black holes" where criminals can operate, whether inside abandoned buildings, or in front of them. Note the sign advertising redevelopment in the area. Old North St. Louis is a little too rough for me, but I laud the efforts of people risking their money--and in some cases, their safety--to renovate and take back these neighborhoods. The trick is keeping a balance between the original, law abiding residents--the ones who stuck it out during the bad times--and the new residents buying and renovating abandoned houses.

Delmar Blvd and Beaumont St

I stopped by the Scott Joplin House last Saturday just west of downtown St. Louis. Much has changed since he lived in the upstairs of the house on Delmar Blvd at Beaumont St.; what was once a thriving German and then African American neighborhood is largely vacant, with light industry creeping in from the south and east.

Standing on the northwest corner looking at the southeast corner:Standing on the northeast corner looking at the southwest corner:Standing on the southeast corner looking at the northwest corner:Standing on the southwest corner looking at the northeast corner:It's hard to believe that this immediate area once possessed tens of thousands of more people than currently live in a one mile radius of this intersection. But as can be seen below, the proximity to downtown is certainly an asset.You can barely see it, but the redevelopment of Washington Ave is actually just starting to reach this area. The wide open spaces are certainly easier for developers to work with; let's hope that they stick with the urban street-scape exemplified by the remaining buildings on the street.

Road Trip: Missouri Mines State Historic Site

There was a time when lead was a bit of a "wonder metal." And conveniently for the economy of St. Louis throughout its history, southeast Missouri has been the epicenter of world lead mining. I ventured over to the old St. Joseph Mine in Park Hills and visited the Missouri State Mines Historic Site to explore the ruins, abandoned since 1972 according to a former employee working as a volunteer at the site.

You can see a satellite image of the mine here.

Above, I took this picture looking into one of the engine rooms of the mine; perhaps this is where the giant pumps that kept the mine from flooding were kept.

Unfortunately, the docents weren't giving tours the day I was there, so I looked around the site myself. I have actually been down in a 300 hundred year old silver mine in Germany, so it was interesting to see the differences in the above ground facilities between the two countries. Below is the I imagine the superstructure of the elevator that brought ore up out of the earth.

The state of Missouri is slowly restoring each of the buildings and considering how big the place is, it will be quite some time before the entire site is open to the public. It's amazing to see how far buildings can deteriorate in just thirty years.

I recently discovered that St. Louis was planning a forty story skyscraper in downtown back in 1930. Seems like it probably fell victim to the Great Depression; it was designed by famed St. Louis architect Harris Armstrong. I'm going to see if I can get some plans of the building.

Detour: Winterset, Iowa

Over the holiday weekend I made it up to Iowa to see my cousin's graduation. Near where they live is the town of Winterset, where the "Bridges of Madison County was filmed. Winterset is actually the county seat, so it has a remarkable century old courthouse in the middle of the town square.

The interior features a beautiful staircase the winds around the walls without a center support.

The buildings around the courthouse square are all intact, if bearing later facing on their fronts.

This is the way towns should still be built; the surrounding buildings create a civic space, a center of town anchored by the courthouse and framed by businesses.

The parking is kept to the back of buildings. thus maintaining the integrity of the four walls of the courthouse square's "room." Not all of the buildings are in perfect shape, but they're all occupied, which can't be said about most city's downtowns--or suburbs increasingly to be honest.

More importantly, this a space where people actually want to visit; luckily the downtown actually has real businesses that locals frequent and not just touristy junk shops catering to out of town visitors.

Front vs. Back

The fronts of late 19th Century office buildings are frequently heavily adorned with ornate stonework and terra cotta reliefs. Look to the sides and back, however, and these same buildings become simple, functional and mostly lacking in ornament. Due to demolition of their neighbors, or simply because another tall building was never built next door, we can often see the somewhat tawdry and non-public sides of many buildings in St. Louis.

Let's look at the north side of the 700 block of Olive St (the south side is a recently built and unneeded parking garage).

The first building in view is the Chemical Building, notable for its ornate cast iron(?) reliefs on the first two floors along the street. The ornament continues to the roof, but simplifies higher up. The backside, however, reveals a much plainer, and anachronistic stairwell slapped on the back of the building:

Note to the left of the red brick is the back side of the Union Trust building, which is the eastern neighbor of the Chemical Building. Its current owners, obviously uncomfortable with its bland, red brick backside, have commissioned a trompe l'oeil painting on the side of the building. All of the white stone ornamentation is merely an illusion in paint. The front of the Union Trust is impressive in its own right:

Designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan, the Union Trust originally possessed large round windows on the second floor, which are still intact on the less public, alley side of the building.

Such divisions between the public front and private, utilitarian back continue to this day; many suburban house use brick on the front of the house but rarely on the back or sides.

Forest Park Gasometer

It occurred to me on the way westbound on Highway 40 on Sunday that the Forest Park Gasometer had very little time left, as can be seen in this photo.
I returned on Tuesday to get a few more pictures, only to realize that the remaining steel superstructure was gone, leaving only the base. It's important to realize that the gasometer was NOT a storage tank, but rather a pressure valve to contain rises in the gas pressure in the mains of St. Louis.

The base itself has seen better days, with thick encrustations of rust and paint coating its exterior. I could hear the clanging of workmen on the inside of the drum as they presumably cut the steel to more manageable pieces.

Apparently, they're turning the whole site into condominiums or something. The old brick gas house, I believe, will be renovated.

The building across the street has been carefully restored and seems to be a harbinger of bigger and better things happening in the neighborhood. As the post woman seen in the doorway remarked when we spoke on the street, "It's history."

Gasometers have been reused in other cities, such as Vienna, but perhaps the too-utilitarian form of St. Louis's central gasometer doomed it.