Eleven Most Enhanced Buildings Awards, May 2003

THE ELEVEN PROJECTS RECEIVING LANDMARKS 2003 ENHANCED AWARDS range in renovation cost from $50,000 to more than $260 million. Most employ multiple financing mechanisms and sophisticated development teams. Only our cover project is the result of time-honored "do-it-yourself" rehab.

The double house at 1429-31 North Park Place was one of six identical buildings constructed by 1871 in a new subdivision near Hyde Park. Land for this unassuming red brick row and two more flamboyant multi-family projects on North Park Place and Bremen Street was acquired at auction in 1867 by Jane and Francis Watkins—husband and wife transplants from the eastern part of the country. Their developments quickly attracted an English-speaking enclave to a predominately German section of town.

Placed on a terrace raised above street level with entrances from the side, the six handsome but simple double houses lined up from 1409-35 North Park Place were distinguished in plan by their unusual flexibility: doorways connected each half at the stair landing and between the upper rooms.

Current owner and Enhanced Award winner George W. Brown, Jr., did almost all of the self-financed $50,000 worth of renovation work himself. A City Building Inspector in his day job, Mr. Brown summoned a few good friends and brought a lot of personal expertise to the project.

Hiring a Croatian superintendent and other recent immigrants from the same country as carpenters, developer/contractor Bob Bauer transformed an abandoned grocery store built in 1910 at 3864-68 Shenandoah into six, market-rate apartments. Architect Jeff Brambila drew plans for the $500,000 renovation in the Shaw Historic District. Financing came from Union Planters Bank, St. Margaret’s of Scotland, the Community Development Administration and, of course, state and federal historic tax credits. With the continued support of 8th Ward Alderman Steve Conway and the success of his first venture, Bob Bauer is pursuing another historic tax credit project down the street.

Completed in 1936 at a cost of a little over $3 million from plans by City Architect Albert A. Osburg, Homer G. Phillips Hospital at 2601 Whittier in the Ville is nationally significant for training black doctors, nurses and technicians at a time when they were excluded from other teaching hospitals. Closed since 1979, the long-vacant landmark reopened this year offering 220 affordable apartments for seniors. Federal and state historic rehab credits were critical parts of a complex $46 million financial package which also included tax-exempt bonds and low income tax credits. Sharon Robnett was the sparkplug for the adaptive reuse developed by Homer G. Phillips Dignity House, L.P. with W.A.T. Dignity Corp./Dominium Acquisitions from plans by Fleming Corporation.

Principals from HRI (Historic Restoration Inc. based in New Orleans) arrived in St. Louis about six years ago in the opening days of Mayor Clarence Harmon’s administration. Intending to scout moderate-scale buildings for residential adaptive reuse, our visitors succumbed instead to the vast but vacant potential along Washington Avenue. LANDMARKS played a key role in that decision as well as the selection of HRI to undertake the illusive convention center hotel complex. (Much has been written about the politics and the financing of the convention hotel undertaking. It seems worth it when one experiences the crystal ballroom at the top of the Statler.)

The former Statler and Lennox Hotels built in 1917 and 1929 respectively now carry the Marriott flag as the Renaissance Suites Hotel (rehab cost $267 million) and the Renaissance Grand Hotel (rehab cost $266 million.) HRI was also honored for developing the once-endangered "Merchandise Mart", a massive 1888 warehouse renovated for $46 million as a mixed-income apartment project located just west of the hotel complex on Washington Avenue. Federal and state historic tax credits played a critical role in the financing.

In the last decade of the 19th century, St. Louis evolved from a footwear distribution center to the nation’s foremost shoe manufacturing center with Roberts, Johnson & Rand/International emerging as the single largest company in the country. This massive factory (built in stages between 1903 and 1922) was constructed in the years of continuing expansion, more than a generation before the shoe industry began its retreat from the city. Located at 1105-25 Mississippi Street on the northern fringe of the Lafayette Square neighborhood, the vacant red brick complex has long been a tantalizing candidate for adaptive reuse. Its size has made it a challenge. Finally, in 2002, two different developers—Loftworks with Conrad Properties and the Jeffery E. Smith Co.—embarked on adjacent projects with a total of more than 140 new residential lofts. Historic rehabs tax credits were a prerequisite for both teams. Together, their investment totals almost $30 million.

Burnt, vandalized and vacant since 1982, Monroe School would certainly have been demolished if concerned citizens had not acted. Foremost among those citizens was Alderman Craig Schmid. Craig, now representing the 20th Ward, has the great satisfaction of living just a block away from this important success story. Monroe (located at 3641 Missouri in the Benton Park Historic District) features pristine symmetry and the dramatic entrance pictured above. Designed by William B. Ittner soon after he was selected as the sole architect for St. Louis public schools by the Board of Education—one of the best decisions that group ever made—the elementary school cost $105,000 in 1898. Renovation designed by Martin Associates with the Hoffmann Group (construction by BSI with Kwame) cost $6 million. This is fifth time we have recognized St. Louis public school buildings with an Enhanced Award.

Renovation of the Civil Courts Building (designed by Klipstein & Rathmann for the Plaza Commission and dedicated in 1930) has a lengthy history starting in 1979 with an HOK study commissioned by the 22nd Circuit Court. Since then the St. Louis Bar Association, the City of St. Louis, the Law Library Association and the Court have combined forces to complete $54 million in seven phased projects. Design guidance has come from Ross & Baruzinni and especially Powers Bowersox Architects. Particularly noteworthy are the renovations of the law library and the wonderful Court of Appeals. Special credit for staying the course goes to Judges Bob Dierker and Tom Grady along with Frank Duda of the Bar Association.

In 1928, Edward Mays hired William B. Ittner to be his architect for what became St. Louis’ most beloved but star-crossed Art Deco skyscraper. Rising twenty-five stories the $2.2 million Continental Life Building was a vertical counterpoint to the lavish Fox Theatre also opened in the Midtown Historic District in 1929. The Continental’s top three rentable floors were furnished as a $1,000 a month, twenty-room penthouse for Mays; the first and mezzanine floors housed May’s seemingly prosperous Grand National Bank. But the building was jinxed. The stock market crash combined with an unsolved bank robbery in 1930 combined to topple Mays’ fortune. By 1935, six of the floors were vacant.

After the last tenant moved out in 1974, the building became prey to scavengers and rapid deterioration. One after another, would-be development proposals collapsed. Finally in 2001, after several years assembling more than two-dozen financial sources, Steve Trampe of Owen Development exercised his $10 option with the City’s Land Reutilization Authority, bought the property and started work on the $28 million conversion to 107 apartments designed by Trivers Associates. Guests at our Enhanced Award ceremony held at the Continental on May 2 were duly impressed.

The fourth phase in a slow but steady rescue operation undertaken by Benton Park resident/developers Ray Simon and Bill Stehnach in 1989, the rowhouse built in 1893 at 1918-24 Cherokee had been vacant since 1987. Today, the four new town house apartments in Cherokee Court West open to a completely rebuilt three-story veranda at the south (rear) elevation. Financing for the $450,000 renovation came from Union Planters Bank along with federal and Missouri historic tax credits plus a façade improvement grant secured by 9th Ward Alderman Ken Ortmann.

Designed in 1894 by Ernst Janssen, arguably St. Louis’ preeminent German-American architect, the intricately detailed building renamed Compton Place is located at 3156 Shenandoah , a prominent corner in the Compton Heights/Fox Park Historic District. The mixed-use project developed and owned by Metropolitan Design & Building includes five market-rate condominiums along with first floor corner studio space for artist Carol Carter—wife of developer/designer Jeff Clark. Funding for the $1.1 million renovation came from The Private Bank along with historic rehab tax credits and a façade grant from the city thanks to 6th Ward Alderman Lewis Reed.

Unquestionably the most dramatic transformation of our eleven awardees, the former Moloney Electric Company Building at 1141-51 South 7th Street was built in two stages (the east half in 1903, the west in 1916) from plans by Albert Groves—a prolific St. Louis architect responsible for many Washington Avenue warehouses. (Before this $3 million dollar project got underway, the owner gambled nearly $250,000 in paint and concrete block removal so that a convincing National Register nomination prepared by Karen Bode Baxter could be initiated.) The handsome arched openings on South 7th Street (originally freight access for the large electric transformers manufactured by Moloney) now welcomes visitors and tenants to the office building developed by Richard Yackey of KRM Properties II LLC with Stark Wilson Duncan Architects.