The Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation has issued its annual call for its Historic Places in Peril for 2019, with nominations due August 15. I encourage anyone who is interested in preservation in Missouri to call out a building or place that is threatened with destruction. I’ve always been impressed with the Places in Peril lists: They’re often creative in their parameters, reaching beyond the standard definition of a historic building or structure. The valid reasons a site might be endangered are many, including fire, neglect, abandonment, development pressures, and insensitive proposed alterations, and the properties don’t need to be listed on any national, state or local list of recognized historic places.
You can submit a nomination online or call 660-882-5946 with questions. Below, my own list, in sweeping categories, of endangered buildings and places in the region:
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The Churches of North St. Louis
Over the last twelve years of documenting the built environment of St. Louis, I’ve noticed a troubling trend in North St. Louis: Its churches are being abandoned. When white flight occurred back in the 1960s and ’70s, the giant Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches built at the turn of the 20th century passed into the loving hands of African-American congregations, who took care of them for decades. But in the new millennium, many of those congregations are closing or moving to North County. I’ve been deeply saddened to see these magnificent edifices fall into disrepair and, in many instances, suffer attacks by scrappers and vandals. The neighborhoods around these churches are also emptying of people, so the long-term prospect of these landmarks seeing new life is doubtful. I’m hesitant to publicize the exact locations of these churches, not wanting to draw attention to the vacant buildings, but they are everywhere. They are portents of greater problems in the future for North St. Louis. And their loss is a tragedy for the historic architecture of St. Louis.
The One-Story Bungalows of South St. Louis
Perhaps I’m being a bit of a Chicken Little about this one, but it’s better to get the word out early rather than when it’s too late. A group of Washington University students asked me a couple of weeks ago how to build equitable neighborhoods, and I answered that our ancestors gave us at least part of the answer: Construct houses and apartments of different sizes and prices right next to each other on the same block. Walk the streets of Dutchtown, and you’ll marvel at the mansions sitting next to four-family flats, the three-story Second Empire houses next door to 1,000-square-foot one-story bungalows.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: Apparently those 1,000-square-foot bungalows are no longer considered “marketable” or “desirable,” and in the “hot” and “trendy” neighborhoods near Tower Grove Park, they’re vanishing. The construction Dumpster shows up one day; the whole interior of house, including the roof, goes into it; and like the Martians’ Fighting Machines from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, a giant, ugly, vinyl-clad, second-story monster begins to rise out of the walls of the little brick house. Even worse, a Second Empire roof is plopped on the front, making a ghastly Postmodern stab at respectability. I’ve been told I’m supposed to always welcome redevelopment, but there is still a demand for quality, respectable, and yes, beautiful little houses in St. Louis. We don’t need to lose them to this ugly new trend in house flipping.
Falstaff Plant No. 10, Old Griesedieck Brothers, Consumers’ Brewery
Beer had been brewed at the corner of Shenandoah and Lemp since at least the 1860s, but in 1977, Falstaff closed its last brewery in St. Louis, and the historic brewhouse fell silent. While much of the rest of Plant No. 10 is occupied by light industry and an indoor skate park, the northeast corner of the old brewery complex, built in the 1890s, is not doing well. The north wall of the stock house, facing Shenandoah, has developed a noticeable bulge and is in urgent need of rebuilding if it’s to remain standing for another century. This is hallowed ground in the history of brewing in St. Louis. While the last local family to brew beer at this site was the Falstaff branch of the Griesedieck family, the Griesedieck Brothers branch owned the complex before them. Otto Stumpf, the business partner of William Lemp Sr., brewed beer with the famous brewing family heir before the latter inherited his father’s business on the Levee and Cherokee Street. Its brewery cave, which local historians usually refer to as the Consumers’ Brewery, is still intact under the streets. (In summer, you can feel its cold air blowing up through vents in the sidewalk out front.) We sometimes forget, considering how intact the Anheuser-Busch and Lemp breweries are, that most historic brewing buildings in St. Louis are now long gone, and losing another would be tragic.
Westland Acres
This historic African-American community straddling Chesterfield and Wildwood has been on the Most Endangered list every year since 2016, and new developments in the last six months will keep it there for the foreseeable future. Listed for sale for $15 million, its current status is “pending.” A long paper trail of newspaper articles documents the descendants of the freed slaves who received this land after the Civil War, and their difficulties paying rising properties taxes as affluent subdivisions swallowed the bucolic land that surrounded their historic enclave. In fact, the name of the tract in official County records is still the Long Estate, the former owner of the people and the land on which they live. Its future is up in the air.
