Compton Heights, Part 4

The final, most elaborate portion of Compton Heights is the large subdivision laid out by Julius Pitzman for the wealthy residents of St. Louis. Supposedly, some of the houses are still in the original families that built the mansions a century ago. I like the Compton Heights subdivision much more than the more famous Westmoreland Place in the Central West End. The houses, quite frankly, are more interesting and more to my taste, and also private security guards have never kicked me out of Compton Heights like they have in Westmoreland Place. I'll let the houses speak for themselves; while their appearance was closely monitored by the neighborhood, there was still wide latitude to create beautiful homes that formed a harmonious streetscape--long attempted in suburban McMansion developments, but rarely attained. Compton Heights has a wonderful website about Pitzman and the entire area,

Montgomery Street from the Air

Thanks to the Built St. Louis Blog, I found this great tool to look at the city of St. Louis from a bird's eye view.

Built St. Louis - Web Log: Brick Rustlers in Action

Pictured at the following link is the block of Montgomery Avenue where I encountered my brick thief friends. I have dated these images to the summer of 2006 before the Great Storm (the Mullanphy Emigrant Home is still undamaged), and it's shocking how good of shape the buildings are in, which I later saw destroyed--or in the process of being destroyed. The group of three buildings on your right featured the building in the middle which is now a giant pile of brick. Looks pretty stable to me. Likewise, the two houses on the left side of the screen are also completely intact last summer; they are now unstable hulks stripped of several load-bearing walls.

It makes me wonder why these buildings were targeted when they were. Montgomery St. is a short street that ends in a T-bone intersection at one end. It's nice and quiet, and from the looks of it, no inhabited buildings still exist on this block. A perfect place to steal bricks, it seems.

Golf in North St. Louis

How does a round of golf amongst the hallowed grounds of Pruitt-Igoe sound to you?

Yes, as recently as 2000, the city has floated the idea of removing large portions of the street grid in North St. Louis to build a suburban style, "urban oasis" that I suppose would cause people to abandon their McMansions in Chesterfield and resettle in the heart of North St. Louis. As a centerpiece of the redevelopment, the golf course would annihilate dozens of (admittedly depressed) blocks of the 19th C. street grid.

While not every aspect of the plan is moronic, it is frightening that some civic leaders are still trying to compete with St. Louis County in the "suburban wars." The city of St. Louis is being reborn because it offers something you can't get in the suburbs--the urban experience. Trying to reproduce the suburban experiencee in the city will always fail, because places like O'Fallon, St. Charles and Chesterfield do sprawl so much better than the city ever could.

And that's not a bad thing the city does sprawl poorly; it only serves to encourage the city to take a new-urbanist approach to revitalization.

Compton Heights, Part 3

The Compton Heights Reservoir Park also features several other interesting features. Below, is the ornamental, Italiante staircase that leads up to the reservoir itself.Below is the highly controversial statue that commemorates German settlement--or something like that--in St. Louis. It was considered very suggestive, even with its title The Truth Laid Bare.
People were a little concerned a hundred years ago that the truth wasn't the only thing being laid bare in the monument.

Compton Heights, Part 2

The magnificent view of St. Louis from the top of the Compton Heights Tower, starting with downtown and going in a counterclockwise direction:
Next is the view looking north up Grand Blvd towards St. Louis's second downtown, Grand Center, with the North Side stretching off in the distance.
Looking northwest, we see Dogtown as well as St. Louis's third downtown, Clayton, as well as I-44.Looking southwest, the St. Louis State Mental Hospital, in serene, 19th isolation, sits on a hilltop in St. Louis Hills.Looking southeast, St. Francis de Sales and the Budweiser Brewery dominate the skyline of the Near South Side.And finally, the six smokestacks of the Cahokia Power Station loom across the river at Soulard.One thing that is really striking is how green St. Louis is; the tree cover provides a valuable, if often overlooked component to the urban experience.

Compton Heights, Part 1

The Compton Heights area just off of South Grand Blvd is remarkable for several reasons. The third standpipe in St. Louis, built to relieve pressure on the pipes of local homes from the ravages of steam powered water pumps, stands in the midst of an interesting park, with a neighborhood of lavish homes nearby. Let's look at the tower first.The tower is built in what is described as French Romanesque Revival, which is a fairly accurate description of the architecture.
The tower is dominated by massive blocks of rusticated stone on the base, while moving up to more finely cut stone work.
The standpipe itself is still inside the tower, and the staircase to the observation deck is still in place, snaking around the outside of the pipe inside the tower.
Here is one of the pipes off the main pipe that allowed excess water pressure to drain off harmlessly.

North Side Church

Delmar Loop

The Loop in University City (yes, and partly in St. Louis) recently won a spot on the 10 best streets in America list from the American Planning Association.

St. Louis Place

Despite getting chased by brick thieves during my excursion through St. Louis Place, I was still able to get some interesting photos of the area. What is surprising, is that while driving down St. Louis Avenue this last weekend in the St. Louis Place neighborhood, I saw houses that look identical to houses in Lafayette Square, where the same houses would cost 500-700K. It's a shame, because St. Louis Place looks like it was once one of the nicest areas of the city, and now it's one of the most destroyed and pillaged areas of the city.Above is the Falstaff Brewery, which has been renovated into very nice apartments. Falstaff, I think, was once part of the Lemp Brewery family, and its location in the middle of a residential neighborhood is typical of 19th Century urban development. Workers would live within a five minute walk from work, and there was no need for hour long commutes by car, not that most people could afford the luxury of such transportation at the turn of the 20th Century. Now obviously, we now know that it was hazardous for people to breathe in all the pollutants from the smokestacks belching black smoke at the end of their street, but the ideal of people living close to their jobs is still attainable, if people are willing to actually look hard enough.
Besides the brewery, the company renovated man of the rowhouses nearby, including this charming half flounder to the north. It clearly once had an neighbor to the left, but it must have been demolished when the streets were lined up to improve traffic flow.
Above is one of the various abandoned warehouses in the area.
Perhaps one of the most iconic views of North St. Louis, this look down N. Market St. has largely lost its historical context. While there is new housing along this street, it has failed to understand the relationship between original housing and new...
..leaving this absurd juxtaposition of an original rowhouse sitting a good forty feet in front of the in-fill housing to its right. Sure, they put the garage in back, as is typical of an urban environment, but really, what is the purpose of a front yard? Couldn't the house just as easily built in line with the pre-existing house, allowing for a backyard at least twice the size of the current one?

But by far, the most important feature of this neighborhood, St. Louis Place Park, remains intact, and provides an important focal point for redevelopment in the area.

Continental Building Acrobatics

I made it down to the festival in Grand Center on Saturday; it was exciting to see all of the people in what was once one of the most bustling areas of the city. I went back on Sunday to do some more photography; Grand Center was back to the same moribund desolation that it's infamous for with the exception of the Earthways House. What is really striking is that there was literally nothing to do, buy or otherwise patronize anywhere along this strip of Grand Blvd.

The Bandaloop performance was very cool, and an excellent way to show how the Continental Building has seen a rebirth in the new millennium. It's too bad, in the words of the reviewers at Apartmentratings.com, that the building seems to have become a glorified frat house.

Sorry about the video being sideways; try turning your head sideways to get the full effect.

"Urban Prairie"

A great article on the demise of one block in Detroit

St. Louis Interstates Hate Parks

I was looking at a St. Louis map recently, and it occurred to me: what is up with every interstate in St. Louis having an inexorable need to cut through one of the city's--and county's precious green spaces? A sampling:

Interstate 70 Cutting through O'Fallon Park

Interstate 64 Cutting through Forest Park

Interstate 44 Cutting through Compton Hill Reservoir Park

Interstate 55 Cutting through Carondelet Park

And of course, the most recent, Page Avenue Cutting through Creve Coeur Lake

Pruitt-Igoe

Many St. Louisans don't realize that one of the most infamous housing projects in the country, Pruitt-Igoe, lies just to the northwest of downtown St. Louis in what was once the center of African-American culture in St. Louis. What is more surprising, is that most of the land of Pruitt-Igoe, demolished in the 1970's, still sits empty, awaiting redevelopment.
Near the Pruitt-Igoe site is Desoto Park, where my friends had a booth at a recent community fair. The fair was well attended and peaceful, despite its somber surroundings. New, seemingly well built public housing has gone up across the street, illustrating the new philosophy in public housing--no more ugly, piece of junk concrete monoliths, but rather urbanist housing that at least mimics the appearance of more affluent housing in the city and suburbs.Above is St. Stanislaus Kostka, which despite sitting in Pruitt-Igoe's shadow, survives as a prosperous, if "heretical," parish serving the Polish-American community of St. Louis.Pruitt-Igoe was a failure almost from the beginning; while it was intended as a noble experiment to remove poor blacks and whites from the notorious Mill Creek slums in the center of the city, it became an isolated, poverty wracked enclave on the Near North Side. It was so isolated from mass-transit and shopping that one family friend related a story of working as a van driver for the complex, ferrying residents to the nearest grocery store, several miles away. Pruitt-Igoe opened just as the city's famous street-car lines were being shuttered and destroyed by the automobile industry, leaving the complex--ironically only minutes by car from downtown--a terrible place to live if you wanted to get to a job.Several websites detail the appearance of Pruitt-Igoe, such as this site and this one for pictures.
Pruit-Igoe actually became the subject of a famous movie when it was imploded in the 1970's.Pruitt-Igoe, along with other failed housing projects, taught Americans that new, wild ideas in public housing was not the answer to poverty, and that poorly designed buildings can actually contribute to the problems they were trying to solve.Here is a recent Post-Dispatch article on the implosion.

Frazer's

My family and I discovered this great reuse of an old storefront across 55 from the Brewery. The food's great too.

Crumby Rundown Malls of St. Louis #2: Crestwood Mall

I hadn't realized how far this mall had fallen since my high school days when I would go to Crestwood just about every weekend. I was alerted to its decline from Dead Malls, and decided last winter to go over and check it out.After having heard about photographers getting arrested at St. Louis Centre, I decided I would need to take my pictures surreptitiously. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but it's better than being chased by mall security, or Leprechauns as we called them back in the day.The problem with Crestwood is its asinine, snake-like floor plan spread along one level. Furthermore, the mall is a strange pastiche of very old, crumby buildings from the 1950's combined with a shoddy early 1980's renovation that did nothing to cure the mall of its awkward design. The mall is now substantially empty, with many of its storefronts sitting morosely abandoned with Westfield's shameless attempt to hide their vacancy. Heavy vacancy has a way of snow-balling--once people start to perceive that a mall is in trouble, it has a funny way of coming true.

Likewise, the food court could best be described as a hell hole ever since its inception. The stench of grease down there ever since I was young still sticks with me. Every so many years, they would redecorate it in some absurd new motif, and one that sticks out to me the most due to its tackiness was when the foodcourt was dressed up like a circus tent. As can be seen, the foodcourt is essentially empty, but considering how undesirable a place it had always been, it's not really surprising.
The corridor leading to the second movie theater, obviously a poorly planned afterthought added to the existing mall, has essentially 0% occupancy in the stores leading to what is presumably the last major draw for visitors in the evening.Perhaps the coup-de-grace is the announced closing of the Dillard's, which anchors the more architecturally interesting end of the mall. The massive brick walls and modernist arches of Dillard's actually always impressed me, and now it's going to be sitting empty in the not too distant future.Someone stick a fork in Crestwood, it's history.

The Rooftops of Downtown

New Houses in Old North St. Louis

I was intrigued at the new development around Crown Candy Kitchen in North St. Louis. There is a lot of rehabbing going on, and more importantly, new housing is being built in styles sympathetic to the historical character of the neighborhood (ie No McMansions).

My excitement, coming from the perspective of an in-the-near-future home buyer, quickly diminished when I saw the prices they are asking for new houses, in quite frankly, an historic but risky part of town. Most troubling, is the seeming lack of garages--facing the alleys of course--for the new houses. I love St. Louis, but quite frankly, there are parts of the city where you don't leave your car parked outside overnight. I know WAY too many people who have had their cars trashed, stolen, or broken into to buy a new house without a garage in North St. Louis.

Back to the prices: $200,000 is WAY too much for a house in that neighborhood. I wouldn't pay more than $100,000 for such a risky investment.

"Terra Cotta City"

While living in Washington, DC for the last six years, I stumbled on a couple of cool sites that featured the vanishing Victorian Period architecture of the city. One of these, Victorian Secrets, interestingly featured a "field trip" to St. Louis and its rich terra cotta history. The terra cotta firm in question actually had its offices in the now vanished Century Building downtown. A very interesting read, and shows yet more reasons why St. Louis architecture is so valuable.

My Encounter With Brick Thieves in North St. Louis

I set out on Saturday afternoon for a friend's birthday party in Tower Grove South, when I decided to take a detour through North St. Louis to take some photos of some old buildings for this site. I had become interested in a section of the city known as St. Louis Place, a wedge shaped neighborhood just north of downtown between Jefferson and N. Florissant Aves. I knew the area vaguely, but basically decided to do some exploring. It did not take me long for my day to become much more interesting.I turned down Montgomery Street (chosen mainly because it wasn't a one way street) off of N. Florissant when I saw the above, rather spectacular building collapse. I pulled over, snapped a picture, and then headed about a hundred more feet up the street.

That's funny, I thought, that house up ahead looks really familiar. I realized that I had seen it here, the Built St. Louis blog about "brick rustlers." I also noticed a powder blue van parked right out in front of the house, and that a much larger chunk of the house was missing--in fact the whole side of the house was now completely gone. I drove a little farther, and snapped this picture of some in-fill housing along St. Louis Place Park.I casually glanced in my rear view mirror, only to realize that the powder blue van was now accelerating rapidly towards me.

It was one of those instinctual moments, when I just knew immediately that it wasn't a coincidence that this van's owner had decided to leave right as I passed by. I realized then that the van's driver had been watching me snap a picture of the collapsed house, which I realized later when I examined the first photo, most likely had collapsed because of brick theft.

My heart was racing, and I realized I had to get the heck out of there--immediately. I fumbled for my cellphone in my coat pocket. I accelerated up to 40 mph, rolled through some stop signs--and more importantly, took a series of arbitrary turns to see if the powder blue van would follow. Even after I made a series of non-nonsensical turns, it was still right on my tail--there was no way that the driver could have been coincidently taking the same path I was taking. I reached St. Louis Ave, with the van a good half block away, but luckily, its engine was approximately 25 years older than my car's, and I quickly began to put distance between myself and my pursuer. I got out onto N. Florissant and headed south. If worse came to worse, I would simply pull up in front of Police Headquarters on Clark St., I reasoned to myself.

Luckily, the van at this point had stopped its pursuit, but I wasn't completely calmed down until I was onto Highway 40. There's something outrageous about people committing open theft in broad daylight, and being stupid enough to draw attention to themselves. I quite frankly had ignored the van at first, and only was drawn to its presence after it began chasing me. How did the van's owner know I wasn't a cop, quite frankly? And where are the police, anyway? The "harvesting" of brick from this house has been going on for months, if not half a year on this street, and not one police detective doesn't want to score an easy arrest of these bozos?

An Almost Unforgivable Error

The Old Post Office Square in downtown St. Louis was remarkable for its near perfect state of preservation on three of its four sides. So the logical action for St. Louis to take would be to destroy one of those three sides. If you don't know me well, I will just say that I'm being very sarcastic. The Century Building, ironically, stood for about a century before it fell victim to idiotic and shady business dealings that called for a new parking garage right across the street from the Old Post Office. Never mind that there are a half dozen other half empty parking garages within a block or two--no, they HAD to have parking right across the street. So while the until recently attached Syndicate Trust Building becomes condominiums, the Century heads to the landfill. Never mind that they could have just as easily turned the Century into condos as well. Well, that would just be too logical. This happened almost two years ago now, and I'm still angry at Mayor Slay and more importantly at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who actually advocated the Century Building's destruction. Sick.