The Case of the Vanishing Links

In reworking the East St. Louis tour last week, I was disappointed to find that ESLARP had revamped its web site... and in doing so, removed a large and valuable archive of information and photographs, much of it primary sources.

I don't know the reasoning behind the purge, but I can speculate on reasons: the information no longer fit the school's "mission". It was "old" or "outdated". It gave a backwards-looking impression. It consumed valuable server space. An individual student or faculty member left and their server space was deleted.

I hope none of them are right; they're all pretty bad reasons.

But this is why I often hesitate to link to off-site information -- it's so prone to vanishing, whether handled by a corporation, institution, or individual. It leaves me wondering years down the road where I got certain information, and if it's correct at all; I find myself more and more prone to saving copies of entire pages and sites to my hard drive so I can at least re-check my sources. Sometimes it seems that in the rough-and-tumble of the web, the only person you can really rely on is yourself.

The hits just keep on comin'

Anyone concerned with the future of St. Louis's urban environment should be reading Steve Patterson's Urban Review StL blog. But in particular, this post is a devastating compendium of the innumerable mistakes made by those who have built the city over the last ten years.

Does silence equal sinister?

I have recently had an interesting and informative conversation by email with a building owner who was rather distraught by my incorrect posting that his building was being torn down without a thought, as the owners have apparently labored and spent in vain to repair it over the years. After several back and forths, we got the situation settled, and I've updated my pages accordingly.

It points out one of those ways that business has tended not to keep up with the times, however: owners of landmark buildings would be well advised to be more public with their intentions for their properties.

With the rise of the Internet in general, and blogging in particular, the public now has a practically unlimited voice. This is generally a good thing; the more public input can be brought to light, the more likely that plans for cities and buildings can be made humane, accomodating, and beautiful.

But there is a danger, as well. It is indeed possible for well-intentioned persons -- myself included -- to rush to print with incomplete or inacurate information. I only know what I know, and if the people who know the most -- the developers themselves -- remain silent, it's hard to do anything but speculate.

And in St. Louis, speculation is often fueled by pessimism. Too often, silence has been the tool of developers and businessmen who know their plans will meet with harsh criticism, or who simply don't care about public opinion. When the survival of our historic architecture and urban environments are at stake, that sort of intractability should be met and fought at every turn.

If that silence leads to incorrect assumptions, it is up to the building owners to correct it -- not by attacking outspoken members of the public, but by put ting out accurate information. There's very little reason not to do so -- blogging is easy, fast, and free. A few simple posts, a few short but accurate paragraphs, can do wonders for a building owner's street cred.

Too often, I suspect, this doesn't happen because businesses are held back by the need for bland corporate perfection: nothing can be said till it's been vetted a hundred times, watered down by meaningless business buzzwords, and reduced to saying virtually nothing so that nobody will have any expectations.

But those days are done. If the "exciting new development opportunity" will mean tearing down a historic building, someone's going to call you out for it, even if you don't mention it in your press release. There's no way around it, and rather than continue an adversarial relationship with the public whose domain is affected by developers' decisions, it's high time those developers became more proactive about announcing their intentions, if not their exact plans.

Nobody expects to know every detail, nor to "save every building" -- witness the recently deceased Switzer Building, whose demise was unfortuate, yet widely accepted as unavoidable after the damage it sustained. If the public knows a building owner is making a good-faith effort to save a building, they might be a lot more accepting when it doesn't happen in the end. And if the public is met by silence, what reason do they have to think that good faith exists at all?

Church fire

St. Alphonsus Liguori, aka the Rock, was damaged in a fire Thursday evening. The fire was primarily confined to the roof, but water damage from battling the blaze likely caused more widespread damage to the interior.

Ecology of Absence has links to more coverage.

SLU's Long, Slow Mistake

The photo below shows the physical form of an ordinary but proper urban street:



This is Locust Street, looking east in Midtown. It's lined with buildings. They're built out to the sidewalk. They stand tightly packed together, and they're multi-story. When buildings like these are put to proper use, these design aspects provide a number of benefits including density, the resultant diversity of businesses, functions and persons within the neighborhood, and the pleasing aesthetic of being in a gently enclosing room.

The street has a number of other notable elements, as well. A line of street trees helps soften the feeling of the place. The buildings are mostly old; some have been renovated, while others stand empty -- but none of these are inherently necessary to such a streetscape. It could also be achieved with newer buildings, in places where gaps in the street wall have appeared.

Speaking of which....



Turn a mere 90 degrees to the left, and you'll see the absolute opposite of the previous photo: a streetscape that has been utterly decimated by demolition and parking lots. It's a visual and functional wasteland, a forbidding and uninviting place to be, acres of land that serve only one narrow and extremely limited purpose.

The rubble at left is the remnants of the old livery building -- the latest victim of Saint Louis University's ongoing efforts to flatten anything that doesn't directly serve them. SLU's ambitions don't end here; they extend across the street to include two of the buildings that comprise the integrated and intact streetscape along Locust:



The desire to flatten these buildings, the urge to transform the city from the first photograph into the second, is utterly incomprehensible to me. Do they really think that the second photo is what's going to attract students? How many prospective students have been turned off from attending SLU by the de-urbanized wasteland that it has created around it?

SLU needs to wake up and realize that they are a city campus in an urban environment, and that -- far from being an evil to be fought against -- this is in fact one of their greatest potential strengths. Midtown and St. Louis at large will continue to suffer so long as Saint Louis University continues to act as though tearing down enough buildings will put them in the countryside. It never will -- it will only create more of the desolation seen above.

Deli St. Louis

Fresh back from a short weekend in St. Louis, and I just gotta ask those of you living there full-time:

Where the hell are the delis in this town?!

Saturday AND Sunday, I'm hankering for a good cold cut sandwich. I find Mom's Deli on Saturday, still open after all these years, and all's well. This afternoon I'm up around Benton Park, so I swing by Blues City Deli - CLOSED!! Aug! What's a guy supposed to do? I cast my mind all over Soulard and downtown, trying to remember any other place that'd serve me a decent turkey sandwich on a Sunday.

I finally wound up at City Grocers, and snagged a tasty roast beef that I devoured while driving out of town. So my needs were met... but it sure seems like there's a shortage of delis in St. Louis.

Or else I just don't know where they are, which is quite likely...

Brick Rustlers in Action

Photos from the 1900 block of Montgomery Avenue, just east of St. Louis Place Park:



I took these shots yesterday -- about 5pm on a Sunday afternoon. That's when most legitimate contracting work goes on, right?



The guy in white was hacking his way back to front across the side wall. Obviously, as old brick walls are load-bearing, this would eventually cause a huge portion of the wall above to collapse. Then the guys just have to walk up and pick up the bricks.... assuming nobody is killed when the wall falls down.

But what about the house? The beautiful, historic, till-recently-partially-occupied house?...



Fuck the house, apparently.



When I came back for another pass a few minutes later, some of them were driving away. I wasn't quite quick enough to get a good shot of their truck as they passed; the license plate isn't quite legible. Damn. On the side, it said something along the lines of "E J Snow Removal" or "Easy Job Snow Removal".



I have to wonder who's paying these guys, who commissioned them to start attacking the last survivors of this block.... and if there's any relation to the ongoing encroachment of Blairmont, an organization that would probably be very happy to see many blocks swept clean of their historic houses. Surprise surprise, that's exactly what's happening.

A Fun Toy

From local.live.com, bird's-eye views of most of the St. Louis area:

Cahokia Power Plant, for a starting point.

The level of detail is incredible. And since the photos are all taken on an angle, buildings and landmarks are easily identifiable. It's a phenomenal resource, and a fascinating new way to look at familiar places.

The photos appear to date from about 2005.

Neighborhood Meeting on Bohemian Hill

The Bohemian Hill Neighborhood Association has called a meeting to discuss strategies for influencing the design and avoiding demolitions on Thursday, March 15th. The meeting will be held at Trinity Lutheran Church Gym, 1809 S. 8th Street in Soulard. It begins at 6:30. All are welcome and encouraged to come.

Please attend and show your support for urban development without demolition of historic architecture!

The ongoing battle

Tonight I added a small but important section to the site's front page, with a working title of "Urgent - Help Needed!"

It's something I've wanted to do for a while, based on a long-standing frustration. I get a lot of emails from visitors lamenting the fall of the city's historic architecture, but so very rarely is there any sense that there's anything that can be done about it. Furthermore, I get a sense that it's treated as something over and done, as though the decay had reached its conclusion, and all the possible damage had been done.

But the struggle to preserve architectural heritage is not a on-and-off switch; it is a continual cycle, a living thing, like the city itself. Buildings fell ten, twenty, thirty years ago -- but they continue to fall today. New threats arise; once-healthy buildings go vacant, then derelict; older buildings are reclaimed, redeveloped and rejuvenated, or torn down.

And whether you live in the city today or moved away thirty years ago, there are still things you can do to help.

Let the city's officials know the world is watching. Let them know that you care about the city's physical fabric, the buildings that compose it, and how it's all put together. Give money, give time, give your voice.

C.A.V.E.: Citizens Against Vulgar Environments!

Clever acronym adaptation courtesy of Steve Patterson.



Evolution of the 'cave' man

All the St. Louis blog world is atwitter over this St. Louis Business Journal article, but I gotta throw my two cents in regardless.

Where to start? I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. It's such an incredibly one-sided article that the developers might as well have written it themselves.

The intention is to portray urban critics as being opposed to all developments, to the very idea of develoment -- which is absurd, of course. We live in cities. Development is requisite to the very environments we have chosen to make home.

But, again, we live in cities -- not the country, not small towns, not suburbs. Those are all different environments with different needs. When a proposed development fails to meet the needs of the city, citizens are obliged to stand up and protest.

I refuse to be silent when someone confuses this environment...



...with this one:



One is the city. The other is not -- it's a suburb. There's a world of difference.

The needs of the suburb have been well-met over the last fifty years -- slavishly so. There is so much suburban development that a lot of people don't know any other way of living, can't concieve that there's something wrong with it, and are boggled when someone suggest that building a strip mall on the edge of Soulard might not be such a great idea, and why are you so anti-development??? People point to all the suburbia, its prevalence, as if it's somehow proof that everyone wants everything to be that way, as if the availability of different options somehow threatens to nullify all those strip malls and subdivisions.

This argument makes my head explode. You've got your goddamn suburbs already. You've got suburbs running out your ears and paving every last damn thing for a hundred miles. You've got more suburbs than we can possibly afford to maintain. Now let us have our city!!!

The needs of the city have been too frequently overlooked. THAT is why we're protesting. THAT is why some developers meet opposition.

Show us the urbanism, and we'll show you the love. From the Continental Building renovation, to the new houses at Blewett High School, the infill houses at Bohemian Hill, the renovation of City Hospital, the rejuvenation of half a dozen skyscrapers downtown, the CONECT project in Old North, there are many excellent examples of how to work with urban environments right there in St. Louis.

The city is a place, with character, with unique stuff that can't be found anywhere else. It draws some people. Those qualities MUST be preserved and nurtured.

In a geographic location that looks like this...


...one can hardly expect a builder to put terribly much thought into what a building will look like, let alone how it relates to what's around it. Nothing there is worth caring about, so who would care about anything new that comes along? Small wonder developers are taken aback when people raise objections to their projects in the city.

But it need not be so -- we are not protesting the existance of a project; indeed we welcome it! It is the form we are criticizing, for in the city, the form truly matters. People here care. And forms can be adapted, changed, altered, improved, without compromising the nature of a project.

Hmph! 'Cave people' indeed. It is unfortunate that positive citizen action, open discussion of the built environment, and widespread awareness is viewed by developers as obstruction and misinformation.

Look at the Bohemian Hill project. You want to know what's on the site now? You want to know what was there? You want to see a site plan? You gotta go to some guy from Milwaukee!! The local media ain't tellin' ya, and the developers sure as hell aren't either! Shouldn't all this information be readily forthcoming?

I find it ironic and amusing that St. Louis bloggers as a group are being acused of spreading "misinformation" by people who commonly fail to spread any information at all.

St. Louis's online community is amazing.

As I skim back over my just-posted take on the Bohemian Hill development proposal, I'm struck by how many links I ended up putting in it. It's amazing how many people are already discussing this proposal, just days after its announcement.

Lest you take that for granted, I challenge you to find any comparable discussion among the residents of Milwaukee. Apart from my little blog, and one or two other bloggers who occasionally touch on issues of urbanism, architecture and development, there's nothing. Silence. A void. There simply is no online community discussing the physical form of Milwaukee or its future.

Granted, Milwaukee can afford to rest on its laurels a bit -- our last Mayor went on to become president of the Congress for the New Urbanism. When he first came to town, he saw a new Walgreens on Brady Street (Milwaukee's equivalent of Delmar) with a parking lot in front of it. "Why'd you build it like that??" he asked the developer. "'Cause that's what the code says we had to do!" was the answer. Mayor Norquist promptly set about changing the code. Then he tore down a freeway; we're just starting to fill in the 16 acres of downtown land that it opened up. It's Milwaukee's poor fortune that he was unable to tear down a second freeway that would have connected downtown to the neighborhoods to the south.

Now we see the results of all that, as urban buildings are popping up like weeds all over Milwaukee's downtown and East Side.

St. Louis, alas, cannot take such consideration for granted. Every bit of urbanism must be fought for, tooth and claw. Ultimately, the city's long-outdated zoning laws need to be replaced; otherwise, it's a case-by-case battle, never-ending and often lost.

"We'll never be like Chicago!"

Having lived and debated both north and south of the Windy City, I have heard Chicago brought up many times as an example of how to carry out some particular aspect of urban design and planning. And without fail, somebody will pop up with the stock local pride response: "St. Louis/Milwaukee isn't Chicago! And we shouldn't try to be!"

It drives me crazy, because it completely misses the point.

Chicago, while plagued with the same problems that most Rust Belt cities must deal with, is a highly successful urban environment when compared to most American cities. It packs considerable population density across a large area, enough to support a busy and thriving mass transit system. The rail portion of that system succeeds because it runs so frequently that it's a viable alternative to driving. It's desirable not to drive because things are so dense, parking so scarce. Things are dense because a large volume of historic buildings have been preserved, and where they have been destroyed they've been replaced by buildings of greater density. It has both major chains and small local stores. It has a diversified economy, fueled by this variety of scales. It has busy street life. It has, in short, all the hallmarks of a true urban environment.

But those are not the trappings of some kind of mythical aura of Chicagoness that if emulated will turn all your citizens into zombie Bears fans. They are the basic requirements of any successful urban environment, regardless of its size. They apply across the board -- in Chicago, in New York, in San Francisco, and yes, in St. Louis and Milwaukee.

Build upon those things, and your city succeeds. Diminish them, work against them, allow developers to build sprawl instead of density, and your city fails.

It is not about becoming Chicago; it is about becoming an urban environment, and Chicago is the closest example one that works. Your city may never "be like Chicago" in whatever other ways you're thinking of (certainly it's unlikely to match Chicago's population), but it would do well to learn some of Chicago's lessons. They transcend any one location.

...and my city was gone

Published in the St. Louis Business Journal, reproduced in full in Toby Weiss's B.E.L.T.: Look what they want to do to Soulard!!

This is a bad, bad plan. It is suburban in form, scale, and layout. It is meant to cater to the heavy interstate traffic behind it, rather than the pedestrian-scale neighborhoods on either side. It will do nothing to knit together the sundered fabrics of Lafayette Square and Soulard. Its brick facades are only the dimmest and most trivial of gestures toward its context.

And it is certainly not "how you build a great city". You do that by creating memorable physical environments, scaled and planned for people instead of cars, responsive to historic context -- not scattered one-story buildings fronting on five acres of parking.

For reference, here's a map of the immediate area:


The gray houses are still standing. The red ones are gone. I will have much more to say on this -- stay tuned.

The Fagin Building

Before there was the Arcade Building, there was the obscure, bizarre, short-lived Fagin Building:

A. W. Fagin Building

This page, by a distant relative of the building's architect, offers some detailed views and interesting commentary. The Fagin Building showed a use of bold forms similar to those of Frank Furness (and similarly reviled in the architectural press of the time); its facade contained vast areas of glass to allow natural light to flood the interior -- a Modernist tenet decades ahead of its time. It was remodeled into the far less interesting Burlington Building after only a few years, but for that short time St. Louis had a truly remarkable gem of architecture.