It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years already. Back in the fall of 2006, I was living in Washington, D.C., and in the process of moving back to St. Louis. I had found Rob Powers’ blog, Built St. Louis, and I decided I wanted to do something similar to his revolutionary website on the Gateway City’s architecture. As I’ve said before, Powers’ tours of North St. Louis were revelatory; I had never been anywhere near most of the places he visited north of Delmar, and I realized I had a hopelessly large amount to learn about most of the city. Like many suburbanites, my image of St. Louis was no farther north than Delmar, and also no further south than the Botanical Gardens. St. Louis is so much more than that. So on May 16, 2007, I wrote my first post for St. Louis Patina.
For the 10-year anniversary of my examination of St. Louis’ built environment, I thought I would look at the most interesting buildings that we’ve lost. Note: These will be discussed without judgment; I know that some were beyond being saved, and not necessarily the fault of the owner. Each one represents many more of its kind, some gone, some in a precarious state of repair.
Photograph by Chris Naffziger
Switzer Building.
Switzer Building, Laclede’s Landing
Severely damaged by high winds, the old Switzer Candy Factory finally gave up the ghost around the time I moved back. There is very little left of the original street grid of St. Louis, let alone the august, simple warehouse architecture that once held the goods that made this city so wealthy in the 19th century. Savaged beyond repair, the building was torn down, and I featured its ruins as the second post of my blog back in 2007. Rumor is that Switzer received calls from worried customers who feared their supply of licorice had just been cut off. Nearby Chouteau’s Landing, replete with its own collection of historic warehouses, still sits empty, and large-scale development has failed to materialize.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Bethlehem Lutheran Church.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Demolition of Bethlehem Lutheran.
Bethlehem Lutheran, Hyde Park
Sitting high up on a hill at the intersection of Salisbury Street and N. Florissant, Bethlehem Lutheran wasn’t my favorite church in St. Louis, but it certainly was incredibly beautiful. The stunning red terracotta and flamboyant Gothic details, paired elegantly with the red brick, gave this church a stately quality, even as it sat empty. But as every year went by, it looked like the roof over the crossing of the nave and transepts was sagging more and more. The stained glass started to break, revealing a yawning interior now exposed to the elements. It was torn down in 2014, and I witnessed the final destruction of its belltower, a cloud of pink dust left behind as it collapsed. I worry about other historic churches around the city; they’re going vacant at an alarming rate, and regardless of one’s opinion of religion, their abandonment affects the neighborhoods around them.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Armou Meat Packing Plant.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Interior of the Armour Refrigeration Plant.
Armour Meat Packing Plant, National City, Illinois
This is going to sound melodramatic, but I’ve seen archeological sites in Mexico, as well as Roman and Greek ruins in Italy, and Armour Meat Packing Plant rivaled the beauty of any of those places. Once the “Hog Capital of the World,” National City was slowly dismantled, one aging slaughter house at a time. Hunter Meat Packing came down into a pile of rubble a few years after I saw it, but my favorite, Armour, held on until a couple of years ago. Demolished in a dramatic implosion, the refrigeration plant featured some of the most spectacular rusting, but still amazingly well-preserved early refrigerating machines (more about one of them in the future). But the soaring, reinforced ceiling and the spire-like smokestacks spoke so evocatively to me. I always knew that Armour would eventually be torn down, but it was still sad to see it go. And more so, I realized that most industrial buildings from the Golden Age of manufacturing in St. Louis have been demolished.
Photo by Chris Naffziger
Deaconess Hospital.
Old Deaconess (Forest Park) Hospital
The old hospital on Oakland just south of the Zoo was one of my first memories of this city, way back in 1986. Those two Spanish Revival towers, jutting up from the roof, always impressed me in their elegance. But to paraphrase a famous Star Wars quote, Forest Park Hospital was more an ugly Modernist renovation than Spanish Revival elegance, and honestly, while its demolition produced a groundswell of memories of previous employees and patients, I was not terribly surprised that the Zoo chose to tear it down. The cool low-relief sculptures of nurses on the façade have been saved, thankfully. But the story of the Deaconesses is now starting to be forgotten, and that is shame.
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Photo by Rob Powers
The Century Building.
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Photo by Chris Naffziger
Downtown St. Louis after the demolition of the Century Building.
The Century Building, Downtown
“Demolishing the City to save it” was an all-too understood refrain in St. Louis for decades. Amazing skyscrapers, such as the Ambassador, fell for “urban plazas.” The Century Building was the most galling for me (technically demolished right before I moved back), because it has now been shown by the renovation of its formerly contiguous neighbor, the Syndicate Trust, that the Century could have been easily renovated at the same time as the former, if only our leaders would have possessed more vision. Alas, I do have hope that the uproar over its demolition has permanently prevented the destruction of architecturally significant abandoned buildings such as the Jefferson Arms or Chemical Buildings. Since the Century’s demolition, not a single historic skyscraper has been demolished, or has it even been suggested. So that’s some good news, at last.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
