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Eleven Most Enhanced Buildings Awards, May 2005 IN ITS PURPOSE AND IN ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS, THE PRESERVATION MOVEMENT HAS BEEN, AND STILL IS, ONE OF THE SANEST AND MOST VALUABLE DEVELOPMENTS IN URBANISM AND ARCHITECTURE IN THIS CENTURY. Each May during Historic Preservation Week , Landmarks recognizes some of the valiant champions of this movement at a ceremony honoring winners of the city’s Eleven Most Enhanced Awards . In evaluating the honorees, the jury looked first at the quality of the renovation and then selected the best citywide examples of renovation projects featuring buildings of differing ages, styles and uses. 2005 is the third year in a row that Landmarks has selected a Midtown, or Grand Center, site to hold the Enhanced Awards. It is the second year in a row that our generous hosts have been Amy and Amrit Gill. |
| Moolah Place Landmarks’ very first historic district nomination to the National Register was prepared in the late 1970s for Midtown -- today's "Grand Center. The district’s collection of buildings includes larger-than-life creations designed by the most prestigious St. Louis and out-of-town architects of the period. Stolid and playful, secular and mystical, historical and avant-garde, the buildings in Midtown offer unusual challenges. One of the most exotic is the Moolah Temple of the Mystic Shrine, designed in 1912 by Ernest Helfensteller. The inventive development team responsible for the $17.5 renovation was not the first or even the second group to try and figure out how to adapt the building and comply with historic rehab guidelines, but Amy and Amrit Gill figured it out. |
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Moolah Place including apartments and a bowling alley along
with this theater was built by BSI Constructors for a cost $17.5
million; a trio of architects gets design credit: Trivers Associates,
HKW Architects and Checkmate. Financing came from National City
Bank, State
and Federal Historic Rehab Tax Credits
. The Magic Chef Mansion (Stockstrom House) Year after year the committee discussed the need to recognize this property with an award, but the owners always said—“not yet.” Something still needed to be done. |
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This is the
year for the "Magic Chef Mansion" at 3400 Russell. Built for Charles
Stockstrom in 1907-08 from plans by Ernst Janssen at a cost of
$50,000, the house was in the original family until 1990. By then
deferred maintenance was evident; soon, light fixtures and furniture
began showing up at auction. Many of us were worried. Who could possibly
take on a single-family house with 30 rooms and about 12,000 square
feet? Nearby residents Glynn and Shelley Donaho sold their house and
took up this challenge with endless energy, incredible care and a healthy
pocketbook . Major expenses included updating all systems, substantial
roof repairs, tuck-pointing, a new driveway, landscaping and the handsome
iron fence surrounding the two-acre site. |
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Next came interior paint restoration, floor refinishing, bath updates and the continuing hunt for missing light fixtures and furniture. The Donahos did much of the work themselves. Yes, there is a vintage Magic Chef in the kitchen! St. Louis Hilton HotelSeveral years ago, Shirley Drury convinced her husband Charles to rescue the Fur Exchange Building and convert it to a hotel. Well, the dynamic husband and wife team has done it again. |
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This
time it'sthe former Merchant's Laclede Building at 408 Olive
Street. Designed in 1889 by Stephen D. Hatch of New York and
local architect L. Cass Miller, with an elegant update in 1906 by
Eames & Young, the pioneer skyscraper once housed banking and
brokerage firms in the heart of the city’s Financial District. But
by 2002, the building was nearly vacant. Using Dale Lampe as project
architect, Drury Development Corporation painstakingly restored the
1st floor ceiling and marble floors to create grand public spaces accented
by a massive historic vault and two restaurants. Shirley Drury chose
the color schemes and is responsible for the handsome decorations in
all 195 guest rooms including the Presidential Suite. Flying an internationally
known flag, the $20 million Hotel Hilton was financed by company
cash flow and lines of credit plus
State and Federal Historic Rehab Tax Credits
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| St. Agnes
Lofts Built in 1904 for about $16,000, St. Agnes Catholic Grade School was badly remuddled in 1951 when a disfiguring addition was applied to the front elevation. So when Landmarks Association prepared the National Register nomination for the Benton Park neighborhood in 1985, the vacant school at 2216 Sidney Street was rated "non-contributing," an eyesore rather than an asset, a building not eligible for rehab tax credits. |
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Historic photos did exist, however, and the intrepid developers decided to try and remove the addition and have the building re-evaluated. It worked! What historic details no longer remained after the addition was pried off were meticulously recreated by Roth Contracting as part of the 12-loft adaptive reuse costing over $3 million. The St. Agnes Lofts project, a partnership of Neal Josehart of Beachfront Properties and Paul Fendler of Fendler & Associates Architects, received State Historic Tax Credits and financing from National City Bank. |
| The Eleven London-born but St. Louis educated, Alfred M. Baker was considered an example of "architectural precocity," having opened his own practice before he was twenty! His sophisticated composition at 360 North Boyle, built in 1896 for an estimated cost of $12,000, was a pioneering commercial venture in the developing Central West End. Twenty years later first floor tenants (an import lace company, a drugstore and a grocery store) were part of a thriving neighborhood commercial district including two doctors, two dentists, a saloon, a florist, a real estate company and a music teacher. |
| Outside, the Maryland streetcar passed by on a loop between Olive and its terminus on Kingshighway. More recent, less cheerful neighborhood history includes the demise of streetcars, abandonment, white flight and traffic patterns that turned Boyle into a boundary street with cars moving rapidly past empty buildings. Somehow William Roth could envision the bombed-out building as the new home to his marketing firm, The Eleven. | 
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at the building's condition, Roth's Father-in-law Fred Guyten
of PGAV Architecture took on design duties. The result is an efficient
yet whimsically stylish environment built by Sitelines. The $540,000
renovation was financed by First National Bank of St. Louis plus
State and
Federal Historic Rehab Tax Credits
. 2201 Arsenal The splendid house at 2201 Arsenal was built in the 1890s on a corner lot overlooking Benton Park. |
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A little over one hundred years later it was collapsing onto the sidewalk, condemned by the City as unsafe—an unlikely candidate for rehab. Any new owner would have to assume a $195,000 federal tax lien plus 8 years of unpaid city taxes. Yet in 2003, the Benton Park Housing Corporation and Alderman Ken Ortmann with help from The Community Development Administration secured three excellent proposals and selected Millennium Restoration & Development to undertake the challenge. Somehow, Millennium managed to pre-sell the property to a couple from Chesterfield for $450,000, locate gap financing from CDA, a construction loan from National City Bank and apply for and receive State Historic Rehab Tax Credits and Missouri Neighborhood Preservation Tax Credits . In February 2005, after another $300,000 in upgrades designed by GMG Design Group in conjunction with CITTA Group Architects, the family from Chesterfield moved into their $750,000 house in the city. |
| Campbell
House Museum Built in 1851 and purchased in 1854 for $18,000 by Robert Campbell, the townhouse at 1851 Lucas Place (now Locust) remained in the family until 1938 when it was bequeathed to Yale University with contents to be auctioned by Selkirk’s. Heroic efforts by local preservationists saved the house and established the Campbell House Museum. An equally daunting task is being recognized today. |
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| The Campbell
House Foundation has just completed a five-year, $3 million restoration
financed entirely by private contributions! The remarkable project
under the direction of architect Kimble Cohn and Knoebel Construction
brought together consultants from around the country to create one
of the most accurately restored 19th century buildings in the country.
After alarming structural problems were corrected, a full set of exterior
and interior photos from the mid 1880s provided an indispensable starting
point. Original wall and ceiling stenciling was uncovered, restored
and replicated with gold leaf; artisans in Philadelphia and California
recreated period wallpaper based on fragments and the photos. Carpets
were rewoven in England and France; false-grained woodwork was recreated.
Today, the sign outside the just-opened museum house says it all:
City Living Since 1851! |
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Lofts at
2020 Washington In 1920, at the brink of a long period of expansion and product innovation including electric fans, Emerson Electric commissioned Albert B. Graves to design a new factory. Located at 2020 Washington Avenue, "Building D," as it was called, boasted the first progressive assembly line in St. Louis. It was also the site of a 1937 strike lasting 53 days -- the longest to date in national history. |
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The following year Emerson moved to its new campus in St. Louis
County and the building became home to The Sporting News, the weekly
"Bible of Baseball." (A painted “Read the Sporting News” sign is
still visible on the east elevation.) After The Sporting News left
in 1977, ownership passed to the Times-Mirror of Los Angeles and then
to the City's Land Reultilization Authority. Next came a series of
would-be developers and their architects attempting to design and fund
an adaptive reuse. Finally, in October 2002, the derelict building
was acquired by The Pyramid Companies which designed and built 103 loft
condominiums for a total cost of $22 million. Financing came from National
City Bank, Missouri
Neighborhood Preservation Tax Credits
and State Historic
Rehab Tax Credits
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| Jubilee Community
Church Offices Several months ago we noticed a feature story in the Post-Dispatch by Tavia Evans about a church group's effort to buy and rehab LRA-owned houses in the Lindell Park neighborhood. Most church members live in this troubled neighborhood just east of Grand and Natural Bridge Road. Jubilee Community Church formed a separate development arm to try and reserve the downward spiral by encouraging long-term residents to stay in the area and attract newcomers. |
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Bringing in private donors and hundreds of volunteers, the small professional staff has already made a difference. The most recent success story is their very visible Jubilee Community Church Offices at 3118 North Grand Boulevard. The building had been vacant from 1996 to 2004 when architect Mike Kileen of Kileen Studio Architects drew up A lovely garden oasis at the rear features donated landscaping, but project costs of $75,000 had to be raised from the ninety-member church and its friends. In addition to religious services, the building with assembly space below and offices above is used for community services including addiction counseling, a free legal clinic and tax preparation. |
| Shenandoah
Place In May of 1923, the Alco Investment Company obtained a building permit for three, four-family flats to be constructed at an estimated cost of $22,500 on a leftover parcel at the southwest corner of Minnesota and Shenandoah. Neighbors at that point might not have been thrilled with this somewhat awkward and dense intrusion in their turn-of-the-century neighborhood; they were even less pleased about it 75 years later. |
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Abandoned in 1997, the flats were vacant for about 7 years before
the DeSales Community Housing Corporation found a developer. Things
still didn’t look promising during Preservation Week 2004 when
we held a “before” open house at Shenandoah Place. But architect
Jeff Clark and Metropolitan Design & Building have used the mundane
trio of existing buildings as a springboard to create an upscale small
community of six condos with shared parking, storage and decks.
Accomplishing this $1.5 conversion brought in The Private Bank for a
construction loan,
state historic rehab tax credits
, Missouri neighborhood preservation
tax credits
, Block Grant funding and city tax increment financing. The Abbey on the Park |
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The Abbey on the Park at 1505 Missouri Avenue was a complicated
project. Designed as the Lafayette Park Presbyterian Church
in 1881 and damaged then repaired after the 1896 tornado, the building
by the turn of last century had become and eyesore—one of only
a few vacant building left in the entire Lafayette Square historic
district. Developer Chris Goodson, who lives next door to the church,
and Trace Shaughnessy, also a resident of the Square, decided to
tackle the problem and hired the Lawrence Group Architects to adapt
the building to condos. Planning was complicated by 17-foot ceilings,
stained glass windows, organ pipes and the historic rehab requirement
that historic interior spaces could not be obliterated. The Result,
a unique $3 million conversion built by BSI Constructors, features
original ecclesiastical elements, multi-floor units, alcoves and a
church pew per owner. |
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| Funding came
from city-approved tax-increment financing,
State Historic Rehab Tax Credits
and a loan from US Bank. |
