Each year a tally of the city’s endangered sites accompanies our Eleven Most Enhanced Awards.  Both the well known and the obscure are represented on the list; the two additions this year fall in the very well known category. 

The first is the Municipal Courts Building, rumored to be the object of a study by the City’s Board of Public Service.  We were incredulous to hear that the study included demolition for a surface parking lot as an option! Designed by preeminent St. Louis architect Isaac Taylor, the Municipal Courts Building got underway in 1909.  Funded by a bond issue passed in June 1906, the $1 million building was constructed on a parcel next to City Hall acquired for $800,000.  The site would later include City Jail and the Children’s Building.  Both were designed by Taylor; both have been razed. 

Another bond issue in 1923 provided funds for the Municipal Auditorium and Opera House.  Designed by La Beaume & Klein for the Plaza Commission, the $5 million complex was renamed for Mayor Henry Kiel in the 1940s.  When the auditorium portion was demolished for Savis Center over a decade ago, assurances were given that the Kiel Opera House would be restored and reopened.   That, of course, did not materialize.  In 1999, Kiel for Performing Arts contacted LANDMARKS about preparing a National Register nomination.  In spite of state historic preservation staff concerns about integrity due to the scale of the addition, the giant of Market Street was listed on the Register in February 2000.  The many pages in the nomination devoted to describing the virtually intact Art Deco interior spaces (the main lobby, auditorium and four assembly halls) were essential to establish significance for listing. 

Newspaper accounts of a proposal to adapt Kiel Opera House into a performing arts school report the following curious alterations:  slipping a mid-level floor into the 3,500-seat auditorium to build a gym below and smaller auditorium above; converting the four assembly halls into classroom space and adding new studios and an art gallery on the roof.  If this indeed is the plan, forget about historic rehab credits. 

It would be dandy to bring the middle and high school performing arts together and give new vitality to an historic building.  (We, in fact, made just such a suggestion for the Ambassador Theatre Building.)  But the Kiel just doesn’t work.  Maybe the school belongs in Grand Center, perhaps in the nearly vacant Masonic Temple on Lindell?  LANDMARKS members who attended our annual meeting in 1987 will remember the myriad meeting rooms, the theater and hall on the top floor and the large, unfinished auditorium at the rear of the ground floor.

The other nine properties on the Endangered Sites list are holdovers from 2001; all listed below. Click on highlighted sites to view more information.

• Busch Stadium



• Carr School
  

  1421 Carr Street

• Century Building
  

  across from the Old Post Office
  National Register

• James Clemens House
  

  1849 Cass Avenue
  National Register, City Landmark

• Mullanphy Tenement
  

  2118 Mullanphy Street

• Neighborhood Gardens
  

  1205 N. 7th Street
  National Register, City Landmark
  (N.B. 2002 the City’s Land Reutilization Authority recently gave a six-month option to a developer proposing market rate housing for the complex bounded by O’Fallon, North 7th, Biddle and North 8th.)

• Hyde Park Turnverein

  1928 Salisbury Street
  Hyde Park Historic District (National Register and City Landmark District)

• Oakherst Place Concrete Block District
  

  near Hamilton and Cass Avenue 

• 5927 W. Cabanne
  

  West Cabanne Place Historic District (National Register District)