What Will Become of the Penrose Park House? 3:47 PM

Built in 1902 by a private owner, the Craftsman home at 4961 Penrose was later acquired by the City of St. Louis, and the land around it became today's Penrose Park. This property was used as the park keeper's house until the 1980s, when it was abandoned. The Board of Public Service recommended demolition in 1997. Though this never happened, the Penrose Park House did appear on the Preservation Board agenda in May of 2006 with a fresh demolition request.

In the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) staff report, Kate Shea recommended approval of the demolition permit. The CRO's reasoning was that the city did not have the funds to maintain the home and that the park's master plan contained drawings for an public amphitheater on the site. A demolition permit was applied for on April 26, 2006, but no work commenced. The permit was canceled on March 12, 2008.

The city's Geo St. Louis website contains April 2010 photographs of the building still extant, albeit decayed. What are the plans for the Penrose Park House?

This Google Streetview capture, probably dating to mid-2009, shows the battered beauty and its bucolic surroundings.

Lafayette, Forest, Carondelet, and Tower Grove Parks all have historic houses within them. Urban parks with remaining park houses are much better at relating the history of the neighborhood. It's sometimes the case in St. Louis that parks and gardens were created by clearing buildings on site. In our most historic parks, though, historic homes were trapped within or specifically built as park houses. It's nice to have a physical piece of history dating before or during park construction.

Private homes within public parks can work. There's one in Tower Grove, on Magnolia, that to my knowledge is privately owned.

Maybe the Penrose Park house could become an "Aldermanic Mansion" where the elected official of the ward would reside?

Guest Piece: Sun Ministries in Hyde Park 10:52 AM

The following is a guest piece by Jason Calahan of Sun Ministries. Mr. Calahan contacted me after reading a previous post on the vacant buildings bill. Sun Ministries' "Board Up Hyde Park" effort--as well as other undertakings in the neighborhood--are, I feel, more than worthy and deserve space on this blog.


Sun Ministries is launching a nationwide effort to rebuild America's most devastated inner cities.  We are calling this undertaking the Isaiah 61 Initiative.  We hope to unite people to serve these areas, and are calling for missionaries to relocate to the inner cities, in order to live and work, rebuild decaying structures, minister to the neediest residents, and make a generational impact on these desperate areas.  We want to minister to the whole person and the whole community by addressing physical, emotional, spiritual, and educational needs, providing creative opportunities, as well as restoring homes and buildings, starting new business and cooperating with existing ones, and beautifying public spaces. 

This house, which actually faces Hyde Park, exemplifies the neglected state of the skillful artisanship found in the Hyde Park neighborhood.  It is one of the better preserved structures.

We are starting in the historic Hyde Park neighborhood, located in North St. Louis.  Although Hyde Park is beautiful in its layout, classic old-city brickwork and architecture, welcoming sidewalks and parks, the area has been subject to generations of poverty, oppression, and neglect.  There are over 900 vacant buildings in the ward, half the population lives below the poverty line, and a third are single parent households.  The neighborhood is one of the most desolate in St. Louis.  There is little tax base, as many residents and businesses have left.  You can walk down streets where one whole side consists of abandoned, decayed buildings, many of which look like they have been bombed.  Pruitt-Igoe was a notorious failed segregated housing project, and though it wasn't located in Hyde Park, it sent damaging shock-waves throughout all of North St. Louis, and is a symbol for the kind of abuse and division affecting the area.  

A common sight in Hyde Park.  Good examples of the architecture and brickwork of the area.

One of the many "bombed out" buildings.

Desolation.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare sight in Hyde Park.

We hope to partner with groups of any kind, including schools, colleges, churches, police forces, city governments, student activity groups, and other social entrepreneurial organizations in order to reach our goals.  We will be moving into homes in the area and restoring buildings.  We hope to provide job skills and training, start businesses, help the homeless enter the workforce, and provide business/retail incubator space.  We are working on providing community programs in sports, arts, and tutoring.  We hope to address spiritual and emotional needs in a one-on-one manner.  We aim to lay foundations of change and attack root problems to poverty and hopelessness in the area. 


Our current base of operations is a building on Newhouse that was given to us by G. W. Helbling and Sons, a silk screening business that had been in the neighborhood for 45 years.  We are currently working on bringing the building up to code and beautifying the property and surrounding city block. 

We hope to transform this huge, beautiful house into our Leadership Center, which will house missionaries and interns and provide space for them to develop community service ideas.

We are planning to restore this building and create our Opportunity Center, which will have offices for providing job skills and training, and a retail space for providing work for poor, homeless, and missionaries.

This building features exceptional brickwork, a cast-iron facade and corner entrance, beautiful architecture, and it is decaying at an alarming rate.  We want to preserve and restore it and use it to provide employment.

In ministering to this community, we have noticed that racism and division are still very alive in St. Louis and the surrounding counties.  St. Louis suffers from little tax support from its county.  People in the suburbs warn us of violence in the city, oblivious to the violence happening in their own “safe” towns.  It has been difficult getting groups with highly-aimed mission statements to come into a poor area.  Individuals and groups in the city have been confused by a group that seeks to build nothing but community.  But we have met really great people in the neighborhood.  Our neighbor Ralph was eager to help us clean out our building.  We played football and wrestled with a group of about ten rowdy young boys.  The people at Cornerstone Cafe have been very kind and welcoming.  Alderman Bosley and his staff have been cleaning parks and alleys with us, and have assisted us greatly in getting established in the neighborhood. 


In ministering to the whole person and the whole community, we hope to preserve and restore the architecture and history of Hyde Park, to retain the beauty and artistry of the neighborhood and increase the sense of community identity.  Most of the structures in Hyde Park are beautiful, classic, St. Louis-style brick buildings with ornate brickwork, and some even feature cast iron facades.  In an effort to protect and preserve these properties, beautify the area, and make a declaration that someone cares about these people and this neighborhood, Sun Ministries is partnering with Alderman Freeman Bosley, Sr. in an effort we are calling Board Up Hyde Park.  We are looking for groups of all kinds who want to help us decorate boards with positive words and images that we will then install in the vacant properties.  If you want to be a part of this effort or learn more about our work, you can see the flyer below or visit http://www.sunministries.org or http://www.isaiah61initiative.org.

The flyer:

Vacant Buildings Bill 9:17 AM

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has reported that a measure to catalog vacant buildings and fine their owners for violations has moved along in the legislative process, winning the support of a key aldermanic subcommittee.

Personally, I am all about code enforcement. Making sure vacant buildings are secure and stabilized should indeed be a high priority. And finding owners of long-vacant buildings can be difficult. So I see where this bill is going and I don't disagree.

However, the obvious question arises: how will this bill affect the several thousand city-owned Land Redevelopment Authority (LRA) parcels? (Let's talk Paul McKee, Jr. later...)

Check out this building at 1435 Salisbury in Hyde Park--an LRA-owned building. The image is courtesy of Geo St. Louis.

While the picture above is dated from August 4, 2006, I was in town January of this year and saw it with each and every window open and un-boarded. I believe the city only requires a property owner to board the first floor to block easy entry. Yet won't open upper floor windows accelerate the decay of this handsome mixed use building, resulting in code violations? How can we as concerned citizens (whether because of safety concerns or historic preservation ones) see to it that this property is more tightly secured? Will the vacant buildings bill help? Will it put pressure on the LRA?

On that note, why doesn't the LRA have a storefront with staff to assist potential buyers? I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that the city has no money. Still, I'd like to see our city's budget reflect the needs of our community. We need to better manage and market the city's inventory of vacant parcels. While many LRA parcels are located in severely distressed neighborhoods and the properties themselves need several thousands of dollars of TLC to become livable, some LRA holdings are in stable or stabilizing neighborhoods. Benton Park West and Old North St. Louis, to name just two, should have dedicated LRA staff helping market viable properties.

Beyond that, I wonder if the city has ever considered an Urban Homesteading program, whereby you essentially get the house itself for free, in addition to other tax credits, if you bring the house to code and remain living in it for several years. Baltimore pioneered this type of thing in the 1970s and saw hundreds of properties renovated. From a 1986 New York Times piece entitled "Baltimore's Story of City Homesteading":

During the 1970's the city sold blocks of abandoned Federal-style row houses in downtown neighborhoods for $1 apiece and provided buyers with up to $37,000 in low-interest construction loans. The city provided technical assistance and authorized payments to approved contractors. Major work had to be completed within six months and, after 18 months in residency, homesteaders received the deeds to the houses.

The Baltimore homesteading program evolved as an alternative to urban renewal programs that were phased out. The first project, for example, was a block of 44 tiny row houses on Stirling Street in Oldtown -one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in East Baltimore.

Other solutions for vacant properties exist. What about a community service program whereby those convicted of certain low-level crimes could serve out their sentences rehabilitating vacant and city-owned properties? Skills would be gained in the process.

As I have posted previously, Kansas City is using federal monies (through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) to establish what is being called a Green Impact Zone in the city's downtrodden east side. This program would employ un- and under-employed neighborhood residents in renovating and weatherizing both occupied and vacant housing. St. Louis has largely used its ARRA funding to plan bare bones streetscape improvement projects that didn't ever even seem to consult the surrounding community. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Where are our priorities?

I think this Vacant Buildings bill is probably a good "stick" measure, but where are the carrots?