How much that's on this list could possibly be approved? (By the way, the list contains the number of jobs the project is expected to create.)
Exciting to even see it all in print! I mean...nearly every streetscape would be rehauled!
That's all for now. It's finals week, and I have a 15-20 page paper, a presentation, and a final all due by Tuesday. Wish me luck!
From the St. Louis Globe Democrat collection, a shot taken from Union Station, at 18th and Market, looking northeast, around 1955.
This would have been the far eastern section of Mill Creek Valley.
No singular building in this picture looks like it could have been just that architectural gem to inspire people to fight for its salvation. Yet taken together, it's an important piece of the urban panorama. We need to make sure that whatever is to replace these "plain ol'" urban buildings is as built-t0-last as they were--and as plainly attractive and human scale.
Too often, they're lost because they fail to inspire. Their context of importance is lost over time.
The response of some to these statistics is to call for still more demolition, abandonment and neglect of older and historic neighborhoods. In the last three decades we lost from our national inventory of older and historic homes 6.3 million year-round housing units. Over 80 percent of those units were single-family residences. The vast majority of them were simply demolished were thrown away as being worthless. These demolitions occurred at the very same time that the number of units of affordable to low-income households has fallen. In essence, America has been worrying about how to dismantle the barriers to affordable housing and the same time it has been dismantling the very homes that are, or could be, affordable.Thanks to Squandered Heritage for the heads up!
Many of us urban planners like to think that the days where planning comes from a group of well dressed middle aged white men and is passed down to communities of all colors, ages, and incomes is over.
Really, though, it's not. Urban renewal is alive and well across the country. New Orleans is deadset on tearing down a 16 square block neighborhood known as Tulane/Gravier (or Lower Mid City) for a new Louisiana State University and V.A. combined hospital complex. Likewise, Baltimore has already torn down a swath of "Middle East Baltimore" for an expansion of Johns Hopkins.
I know, in New Orleans' case, sensible alternatives abound for the siting of these two important hospitals. There's, in fact, a moribund medical district already just to the east of their desired footprint that contains more parking garages and surface lots than buildings. It's ripe for redevelopment. But the city wants to build the hospital atop Tulane/Gravier--a poor neighborhood that was heavily flooded during Katrina. An unlikely renaissance seemed possible just post-storm, when a Tulane medical student organized the neighborhood with a new group called "Phoenix of New Orleans". But the LSU/VA Medical Complex talks led the city to declare the Tulane/Gravier neighborhood a no-permit zone. That's right. Since December 2007, the city will not issue building or demolition or rehabilitation permits for the entire area.
A row of houses--in varying conditions--in the Medical District footprint. Whole blocks of these distinctively New Orleans homes, some dating to the Civil War, will be torn down soon if current plans are approved. Photograph by Becky Houtman.
Ultimately, Tulane/Gravier will likely be felled (even as a National Register historic district). Why, in a city with an affordable housing shortage, in a city that has recently demolished nearly every public housing unit (attractive and sturdy as they were), in a city where there are many vacant and underutilized parcels in the current medical district, are they tackling Tulane/Gravier? It's a poor neighborhood with rundown housing. The development team wants that site "development ready". It's often that simple. That's all the justification that's needed.
“It was obvious the community was falling apart,” said Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean of the medical faculty and chief executive of the hospital since 1997. “I could see drug deals from my office.”
An East Baltimore row. Is this torn down now? I don't know. I'm trying to find pictures of the redevelopment area. But this should give a proper context. Photograph courtesy of bing7220's flickr page.
It's funny: it's as if poverty is synonymous with blight to the average person. It's an impediment to investment rather than an economic state of a neighborhood populated by people who have lower earnings, yes, but also hopes, goals, lives, jobs, dogs, front porches and back yards...
To my knowledge, though, St. Louis may be one of the biggest proponents of a "New Urban Renewal". Late 20th and early 21st Century neighborhoods that were "redeveloped" include McRee Town, Gaslight Square, and Bohemian Hill.
Perhaps these developments, especially the former two, seem beneficial to the city in the end. Slums were cleared away; poverty scattered; aging and unkempt buildings rendered nuisances no longer. McRee Town and Gaslight Square seem to have caught on to that elusive middle class population that the city has been seeking for so long.
But these developments have set an alarming precedent: that after enough decline, neighborhoods are unsalvageable and must be torn down. Imagine if this scenario had played out in Soulard, which it almost did, and Soulard were redeveloped into the neighborhood of Garden Apartments that St. Louis's hotshot planner Harland Bartholomew actually wanted.
Better yet, imagine the impoverished residents of McRee Town suing the Garden District Commission before they planted the current crop of passably urban but uninspired homes that replaced the neighborhood's history. Pretend that they won; that the redevelopment could have demolished only those buildings that could not have been saved. Imagine that a thoughtful cohesion of old and new breathed new life into McRee Town, rather than a coalition of wealthier neighborhoods and a self-interested major institution razing it and renaming it "Botanical Heights" in shameless self-promotion.
Might we be having so many problems with Blairmont? If McRee had somehow informed our elected leadership and citizenry that it's possible to forge a new neighborhood identity without all new buildings; that poor people can be mobilized to better their community if they see some investment and new jobs come with it--what would be happening on the Near North Side this day? Blairmont is simply a clever form of urban renewal, Smart Shrink, take your planning poison pick. It's secretive. It's top down. Though, after five years, we still know of no specific plans. Given this economy, whatever plans there were may even be scaled back at this point. But it doesn't matter. Irreplaceable architecture, St. Louis's best economic development asset, is being lost and there's no leadership to stop it, to stem it, to plan it. Citizens don't have the keys to that proverbial backroom where these dealings take place. So many have grown indifferent or inured to our city's stagnation.
The New Urban Renewal is much like the old in its mentality. Impoverished neighborhoods have, by virtue of their struggle, proven themselves not viable. The N.U.R. states that, once someone with greater access to capital comes along and sees a way to squeeze tax revenue out of an area, it should be torn down. There is too rarely the question: can we improve the neighborhood without replacing it?
But the newness of this round of Urban Renewal is that it's only those neighborhoods that have demonstrated a prolonged resistance to the recent better times for cities that are being bulldozed. Aren't these neighborhoods the ones that need the benefits of bottom-up planning and community sensitivity the most?
It is important not to forget, post-Barack Obama, that top-down planning still occurs. And it's still quite often wrong and misguided.
Cinco De Mayo 2008 on Cherokee Street. Photograph from cherokeestreetphotos.org.
The third is Big River Running Company at 5352 Devonshire. They're an athletic store that specializes in running/jogging gear. They'll even make you strut your stuff, observe your gait, and recommend the proper shoe. Right now, and until November 22, they're having "Store Wars", pitting their West County location against this, their walkable (or runnable?) South City store. Bring in five or more canned goods and earn a chance at a $100 Big River Running gift certificate. And please, help the South Side win this competition!
The fourth and final store is HomeEco, at 4611 Macklind. They call themselves "your Green General Store". That's pretty accurate. If you're one of the ecologically sensitive sort, the store carries everything from those now omnipresent energy efficient lightbulbs to recycle bins to "green" furniture to hemp-made pants. No kidding.
Cleverly, they have decided to promote one another's business. Purchase something at any one of the four stores. Secure a receipt. Take said receipt to one of the other stores. Receive 10 percent off your purchase.
I was delighted when I heard this. All four businesses are within a stone's throw of one another. All offer very different products and services. Instead of going it alone, they offer this simple cross promotion that I can tell you, from personal experience, goes a long way! Though Macklind is extremely walkable and pedestrian friendly (not a wide street, not hugely trafficked), it's easy for most St. Louisans to pull up in a car, get what they want, and leave. This promotion reminds people--hey, this is a business district! Stay around and shop for a while.
It's very difficult for small, local, independent businesses in St. Louis. Especially now, with a sunken economy, people are willing to take fewer spending "risks". A lot of times, a name brand wins out just because shoppers know what to expect, or can more easily secure a parking spot, or both. It's this simple kind of cooperation, this cross promotion, that will help to cushion these four very special businesses from the fate that has befallen so many of their less innovative predecessors--shuttering.
Please, support the Macklind Business District and take advantage of this small but important promotion. Local and unique retail needs you! Remember, more of your dollar will stay in the St. Louis economy.
I know, I know.
Who could resist the show? What kind of scowling, bitter scumbag of a human being would protest a show that, in tearjerking fashion, delivers domiciles to the deserving?
S0-and-so is a nurse who is also a single mother. She works 16 hours days and her 13 year old daughter watches the three younger brothers and two younger sisters when not at school herself. Or some other iteration.
Then, Extreme Makeover's "Ty" drops in, sends them on their way to a vacation, while the show's crews pull down their old, outmoded home and replaces it with a much more glamorous (and much larger!) new one.
Actually, I speak in facetious-snide tone, but there is something truly insidious to this show. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has been tearing down historic homes all over the country. Rarely are the houses they demolish even in considerably poor shape. Sometimes, they're simple local vernacular style homes. Other times we're talking beautiful farmhouses over century old.
And yes, they tend to build something that, if not matching the scale of the neighborhood, at least passably references its surrounding context. And yes, it appears high quality (who can tell, though?).
But it's simply unconsciable what they do with some of these historic homes. I'll get to why in a bit, but first, take a look at some of the before and afters.
First gut reaction: it fits in very nicely with the neighborhood overall. Sure, they ignored the gentle curvature of the neighboring building's windows in favor of the noticeably blocky kind. And they certainly didn't find room to add the bay windows so characteristic of the old house. But, nice job, right? Well, in this particular show, the mother had to take care of a special needs child who was unable to walk. Therefore, she had to carry him up the stairs. In her new home, there's an elevator. I understand that the old home was not really working for her. But is it impossible to build a new house on a vacant lot nearby, or rehab the structure to include the elevator (on the show, they said no, it was not possible)?
Here's another, this time from Geneva, New York (already blogged):
Before:
After:
Again, it's all right. But why not "makeover" the historic home--in the above case, a 150 year old house!
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has come and gone in St. Louis. The show actually selected two properties locally, one home and one business. Luckily, both were outside City Limits (the home in Shrewsbury, the business on Manchester out in West County). Why luckily? Again, a small, quaint, older home was sacrificed for a neotraditional new house.
Extreme Makeover is threatening because it sells, quite successfully, that time-tested concept that old = bad and new = good that has threatened cities and historic preservation for decades. Worse, it does so in such a way that makes it hard to challenge. When it's a husband whose wife has recently succumbed to cancer on the receiving end, how can a preservation-minded citizen stand in the way of a bungalow bash-'n'-build? Worse still is the way in which the buildings are torn down. The show's host, Ty Pennigton, is known for his zaniness (usually to awkward excess). And so, he never fails to find some "creative" and bombastic way to demolish the home. In one show, the homeowner loved cars. So he enlisted several old cars to literally lasso the house and pull it down. In another show, a group of rough-and-tumble bikers took the house down by a couple dozen sledgehammers.
The demolition becomes a spectacle when it should be a lesson. In our now more ecologically aware culture, why tear down a perfectly good building? It's wasteful, saying nothing of the value of the history lost in some of these buildings.
It speaks to that damaging "bigger is better" mentality that keeps a lot of buyers away from smaller lots in central cities. But it goes beyond that, since the show doesn't always tackle urban lots anyway. It's about how old houses are characterized and how the show's need to entertain the A.D.D.-afflicted viewership needlessly erases salvageable and often attractive houses from the landscape. The show depicts old house dwellers as needful of the charity of a brand spanking new house when they might simply need an addition in the rear of the structure and a coat of new paint on the exterior.
Rehabs are slow and boring. The end result isn't as dramatic as a new Craftsman-influenced mansion in place of a blase but sound little bungalow. But rehabilitations are better for the environment and allow future generations a connection the past that is lost with each "teardown" that this show encourages.
I will not stand for it anymore.
I have pushed off writing further on the now-demolished McPheeters warehouses on Lewis Street just because doing so seemed fruitless. After all, there is no way to return the important lost buildings, and little point in aggressively emphasizing the obvious -- that the demolition of the warehouses was probably city government's biggest preservation failure of 2008.
Survey number HABS MO-1172
Building/structure dates: 1857 initial construction
Building/structure dates: 1859 subsequent work
Significance: This 2-1/2 story, brick house, built in 1857 and 1859, is typical of the upper middle class homes of the day; notable because it is so typical.
