Good News/Bad News Round-up 6:48 PM

> Downtown St. Louis Business reports that the southwest corner of 14th and Washington may soon see some actual construction. It's a glassy contemporary building. Though it's built across several old lots, it's still more to neighborhood scale than the cancelled Skyhouse development. Plus, it's nice to see what looked like a useless demo (the old Ehrlich's Cleaner's building) actually be vindicated.

This is Good News!

> The St. Louis Preservation Board approved the demolitions of two structures on the 900 block of Locust Street--for a turnabout for the proposed Indigo Hotel. The city's Preservation Board (repeat that to yourself) allows a developer to demolish two urban buildings in the city's central business district. What decade is this? Our CBD is too tattered, too anti-urban already to be allowing for further demolitions, especially for such an autocentric land "use". This is all around bad planning.

This is Bad News!

> Word is, on the Urban St. Louis forums, that the old industrial building near the Kingshighway Viaduct on Dagget Street in the Hill is threatened with demolition for a new mixed use development. One of the forum members claims the plans, which are to be made public tonight, reflect a development that would be beneficial to the neighborhood. I just hope they'll save the facade of the structure.

I have to Abstain on the Good/Bad declaration until I see the plans.

> Metro's next extension will be from Clayton to Westport. While I think that their priorities should be with the Northside-Southside line, I understand that St. Louis County will be voting on Proposition M next week, and they need to demonstrate a commitment to transit in the County. Any expanded rail service to the region--especially if better planned than the Cross County extension in terms of station design and pedestrian friendliness--is a benefit to the region as a whole.

This is Good News!

That's all for now. I may append later.

For what do we sacrifice our mid-century marvels? 12:33 PM

As demolition of the Doctor's Building is complete, and the threat of the San Luis Apartments demolition grows more tangible, I just have to ask one question regarding the targeting of mid-century architecture and what ultimately replaces it: why?


In the case of the Doctor's Building, the new denizen of the site will at least be urban in form and keep a mixed-use presence on the site, even filling in the land on which the parking lot that the Doctor's Building originally claimed for its own construction rests. But concerns over why the building had to be demolished at all remain, as well as doubts about the quality of the design of the new project. Michael Allen wrote a beautiful essay on the Doctor's Building and another on his qualms about the proposed development over at Ecology of Absence.


In the case of the San Luis Apartments, (or crazy, funky mod building with three compound fractures, if you will) the St. Louis Archdiocese intends to turn the site into a surface parking lot. Vanishing STL has more on their plans to establish a "campus" where now only a "hodgepodge that happened over time" exists with regards to buildings. Those are the words of our spiritual leaders, folks. Check the full story out here.


I might add, on a bit of a tangent, that this "campus" mentality is what fuels St. Louis University to rid of its own troublesome "hodgepodge" and seek a unified, faux-Gothic appearance punctuated by green space. It's as if the city and its neighborhoods are once again canvasses from a time of urban renewal, where blocks can be closed, buildings torn down, people uprooted, churches and institutions drained of their members, and once active urban spaces with the potential to be such again reduced to parking lots and garages--all in the name of creating a logical "campus". It's a mortifying confirmation of SLU's and the Archdiocese's view of the city and their respective roles within it--that the city's complexities, those that render it interesting and unpredictable and urban, can be done away with in order to produce a sterilized, definable, controllable, and marketable "place."


Any Mid-Century Modern proponent should look further back to what is St. Louis's perhaps most egregious abuse of land in a direct violation of what neighborhood residents originally demanded. Look no further than the northeast corner of the intersection of Chippewa and Kingshighway, where four neighborhoods and a whole lot of pedestrian and automobile traffic converge.



This was what the corner used to convey when the old Famous-Barr Southtown store was constructed in 1951. Though its massive scale and caustic materials may have hurt its chances at recognition as "historic" in the 21st century, there is a lot to commend about this structure, demolished in 1995. In typical streamlined modern fashion, the building adhered to a classical form while showing it up on the massing and using bolder materials. That is, this building has great respect for this large and heavily trafficked corner with its dramatic curvaceousness. It commandeered this intersection with its very presence, so much so that one barely notices the gas station in the foreground. Combined with the northwestern block of buildings of this intersection, this is unmistakably an urban neighborhood.


Fast forward to 2005, and construction has been completed on a new commercial strip center over the site of the old Famous. The result is a dreary and awkward design that can't even compete with the suburban counterparts it has attempted to emulate. One of the outbuildings abuts Chippewa, albeit about eight feet above it, and shows its backside, literally and figuratively, to the passers-by below. A Walgreens store occupies the parcel closest to the corner, but with a spacious row of parking and a non-sensical triumphal arch/bus shelter(?) that urges the otherwise overlooked pedestrian to jog across a parking lot to purchase wares that can be found in an identical store in Des Peres or dozens of other St. Louis suburbs.







The neighborhood fought a K-Mart store that was interested in the 11 acre lot in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The "Southside Coalition" headed by John Klevorn pressed for an urban, mixed-use replacement to the felled Famous. Per an April 5, 2000 Riverfront Times article:



[14th Ward Alderman Stephen] Gregali, Klevorn and the Southside Coalition have a different plan for the long-empty corner, and Kmart is not a part of it. Instead of one "big-box" development, they envision two or three smaller stores, something along the lines of an Old Navy, Circuit City or T.J. Maxx, connected by smaller storefronts featuring the likes of a St. Louis Bread Co. or other small stores and restaurants. In their plan, the stores would be close to the street and the parking would be behind the stores -- still free, just not as visible from the street. The bricks and architecture would be more suited to the surrounding apartments and businesses, similar to the strip on South Grand Boulevard at Arsenal Street.


The coalition produced a rendering depicting what they would like on the site. Contrast it to the photos above.




Interestingly, this drama unfolded the year that Mayor Francis Slay, then President of the Board of Aldermen, began his first campaign against incumbent Clarence Harmon. Slay said of the Southtown site, "This issue is too important to sit idly by and watch from the sidelines."



This quote makes the result of the K-Mart protest all the more surprising. The announcement of a first ever urban PetSmart drew excitement, and the redundancy of an Office Max addition to the neighborhood (with the Office Depot store in the old Venture strip center further south on Kingshighway) was forgiven. And Walgreens did in fact move from a declining strip center across Chippewa to a new building on the site, as rumored. Failing to see the follies of shifting commercial boxes around doomed strip centers, the leadership suddenly dropped the activist role and began to back the development on the site as we now know it.


The recent exchange between Steve Patterson and still-Alderman Stephen Gregali is classic and must be read to be believed. The Southtown reference is toward the end. At least Gregali spoke on the issue when prodded; in great irony, Mayor Slay has "sat idly by" and has remained mum.


Despite a new tenant (the Army Corps of Engineers) and a proposed pizza joint, the center has been a remarkable failure, with most of the storefronts on the northern building never even leased. An urban clothing store and a Verizon Wireless store have already faltered, and the Cold Stone Creamery had, at least at one point, switched to "seasonal" hours.


Okay. So what is my point? Go back to the beginning of this post and look at the old Famous building. Look at what replaced it. Do St. Louis and its leaders and residents not have the power or the will to demand better? In Southtown's case, all seemed aligned to ensure that the loss of this urban building would not be for naught; that the vacant lot would be filled with a worthy successor that would live to see not just its 50th, but perhaps its 100th anniversary. What happened? This case shows the vigilance and dedication it takes to be a proper steward to St. Louis's built environment. Vocal protest of a big box may not be enough; it may require vocal advocacy for what would be better than the box.


In retrospect, or at least in comparison to what's there today, the mid-century Southtown Famous Barr should have remained; its presence was stunning and bold and, yes, even urban. Mixed-use redevelopment of the building seemed entirely possible with a creative mind and equally creating financing. Instead we have lost not just a magnificent urban department store, we have lost that very corner itself.


Who knows how long it will be until this site is rebuilt again. Will we, at that point, demand something lasting, something beautiful, something truly fitting for St. Louis? Or will we play strip center shuffle yet again?



Let this stand as a warning for West Pine and Euclid, and for Taylor and Lindell. That mid-century building you think is ugly and outmoded--wait until you see what this century produces.


[Photographs of Southtown Centre courtesy of Urban Review St. Louis.]

St. Louis needs more neutral grounds, err...medians 1:07 AM

The story goes that, in the early 1800s, Creoles in New Orleans' French Quarter and Americans in what is now the Central Business District (then Faubourg St. Mary) had established separate cities with separate governments and separate cultures. Where the two collided, along Canal Street, the central portion of the street was the only permissible point of diffusion between the two starkly different and antagonistic cultures. The Canal Street median, as St. Louisans might call it, became known as the "neutral ground"--a designation which now applies to all medians in New Orleans.

It should also be noted that New Orleans is simply crazy about the neutral ground. Some are incredibly wide and feature walking paths. Others, even post-storm when New Orleans' Magnolia Trees were largely lost, are lushly planted and beautiful year-round thanks to the city's subtropical climate. St. Charles Avenue and yes, Canal, feature streetcar tracks in their neutral grounds. In almost all of them, spectacular Live Oaks contort above the streetscape as if inverted, their twisted roots on display instead of more orderly branches.


This is the St. Charles streetcar running through Uptown New Orleans. On days with good weather (defined as 68 degrees and up, light rain or less by native New Orleanians), you will see joggers and sightseers sharing right-of-way with the clanging streetcars.



Historic photograph of the Canal Street neutral ground, circa 1850s.



And a more current photo of Canal Street, now with streetcar tracks.



But, I digress. The point I'm trying to make is better demonstrated above (streetcars are a ways off for St. Louis). Here is an entirely doable project to improve pedestrian friendliness of St. Louis streets. Above is Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans. It may look like a full blown park, but this in fact is a center median. It's huge--and it has the effect of slowing down traffic and providing a comfortable cushion for the pedestrian from the traffic that does exist. It's also very aesthetically pleasing.


Oh, and these are Live Oaks, by the way. These have Spanish Moss growing on their branches.

St. Louis has some notable wide median streets. Private streets such as Portland and Westmoreland have them, as do public streets Bellerive, Reber Place, and Holly Hills on the South Side. Russell has a mini-median. Lewis Place, pictured below, is a prominent "medianed" street on the North Side.






If there is a lesson from New Orleans, it's that these medians, or neutral grounds, should be accessible, active public spaces, much like linear parks, rather than private gardens or mere decoration. Imagine South Kingshighway with a large, somewhat flat median (unlike the rather new medians placed on South Grand and Tucker Boulevard, which seem too tall and do not invite active use) in the center, attractively planted with greenery and walking paths. Traffic would be slowed and--gasp--pedestrians might feel safe crossing over to Tower Grove Park to the east. Instead of the street being treated as a literal highway, it might instead be a grandiose urban boulevard that both efficiently carries traffic and accommodates pedestrians. Plus, as New Orleans has also shown, these designs provide built-in opportunities for in-street light rail/streetcar transportation.

I say that St. Louis should shuck its neutrality and fully embrace the New Orleans-style neutral ground.

[Edit: (3/29/08) A New Orleanian kindly informed me that 60 degrees is, I quote, "cold."]