Metropolitan Rural

For anyone familiar with the Avalon on South Kingshighway, you know it’s a real eyesore. It’s been in a state of major disrepair for years. The owner has been “trying” to sell it for a hefty sum and hasn’t had any luck. Every time the city gets close to taking possession, he finally steps up and pays all his back taxes.

For historical reference, here are some other stories about the history of the bulding:

Cinema Treasures

Built St. Louis

River Front Times

Since this building is part of my neighborhood and in my ward as well, the topic comes up at ever neighborhood association meeting and it’s been sort of a thorny issue for a while. Earlier this week barricades were placed out front. It seemed hopeful that something was about to happen. Our neighborhood received the following update from local Alderman Stephen Gregali:

As far as the Avalon is concerned;

I last reported that the tax sale was to be on October 14th and keep your fingers crossed.

As much to my dismay… Larry Tsevis gave Greg a check and he paid the 3 yrs back tax
about 2 weeks ago.

Myself, the City Counselor’s Office, the Building Division and Barbara Geisman have been
communicating almost daily about what to do. The Building Division has placed a barrier
on the sidewalk for public safety issues, the City will proceed with demolition or
preservation. We have not made the decision which way to go because we have also been
communicating with Tsevis’ attorney and other members of the family.

The one thing for sure is that in the next 30-60 days there will be some sort of closure.
When the type of closure is evident I will let everyone know.

Stephen M. Gregali

So, it seems that something is about to happen soon. Whether the building gets demolished by the city or finally gets sold is yet to be seen.  Personally, I would expect the property to be more valuable to Mr. Tsevis with the building demolished.  I would not be surprised to see him stand by and let the city demolish it and then miraculously have a contract to sell shortly afterwards.  But, that’s just my opinion.

It would be a shame.  It could really be a pretty cool old building if it was redone.  I’m no architect, but I believe it would be considered Art Deco.  The front facade of the building (if restored) would be an awesome addition to that little stretch of the city.  But, it is in terrible condition, so the cost of that restoration is most way out of the budget for all but the most die hard restorationist.

We had a fun field trip earlier this week as part of a local homeschool group.  The plan was to start off in the morning at Fort De Chartres in Illinois and then take the ferry across the river to St. Genevieve for the afternoon.

 I printed out some directions from Google to the Fort realizing they were different than what we were given.  Our directions were shorter, but also got us off the highway for a nice view of the country side.  It was really beautiful too.  The trip through the hills and trees with all kinds of birds was pretty cool.  Then we opened out into the lowlands and farms.  There were a couple of blue herons wading in the receding flood waters of the fields.  It was a beautiful day as well.  At least, until we were about a mile from the fort and our last road was under water!  Oh well, back to the regular route, good thing we left in plenty of time.

The fort was pretty cool.  It’s from the 18th century and has been partially rebuilt on the old foundation.  Only 1 building on the site was still orignal and intact, the rest has been “removed” for other uses over the years by local residents in pieces as the flood waters aided in deterioration.  Neat place to stop and visit for an hour or two like we did.

We had some lunch in the picnic area there and then had originally planned to take the ferry across the river.  Of course, with all the rain this year, the river was too high and we were forced to drive down to Chester and back around.

We made it over to St. Gen. around two and stopped in the visitors center.  We had arranged for a tour of the Bolduc House.  There were plans to see more, but with the extra driving our schedule wasn’t quite going to work for that.  I was very impressed with the detail the tour guides covered the construction of the houses.  The details of the mortise & tenon joints, the vertical log construction, the wrap around porches to control sun, the opposing windows & doors for breezes, and even the dirt back yard as a fire break from the cooking kitchen.

We did get a chance to walk around the town some before dinner.  There wasn’t much going on for a weekday afternoon in a tourist town so that was pretty bland.  We did get a chance to stop by and sample some wines and bring a couple of bottles home with us.

It was a fun trip and a beautiful day for it.  I think we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-70 kids & adults total (including a rented school bus full).  It’s always fun to go on field trips with homeschool groups like this.  It’s good to watch 16-18 year olds who are comfortable being around adults and much younger kids.  They are always very helpful with keeping the younger ones in order and letting them know when it’s time to be quite and listen, and when it’s okay to be wild and noisy.

As I said a few weeks ago, I had fun at the Art Museum looking at the cool furniture with all the inlays.  I’ve always loved that kind of craftsmanship.  I saw some more very nice pieces at the museum at the Sheldon Concert Hall. 

I got intrigued enough to do some searching at the local library.  I reserved a book on Marquetry and Inlays and it came in this past weekend.  Browsing through it made me realize how simple it really is.  It always seemed to me it wasn’t really an extremely difficult thing, and I was right.  With a little forethought, the right tools and some patience it can be done.

I was even a bit surprised to see one of the recommended tools in the book was the good old fashioned rotary tool (better known to most as the brand name Dremel).  With a little router type stand it can use attachments to make the grooves necessary for inlaying the other woods. 

What I had always wondered was how do you go about making the intricate medallions and banding that you see on some of the pieces.  Well, as luck would have it, those are actually pre-made at this point in time.  They are typically made in big block form and then sliced off in thin pieces to sell.  And to top it off, they don’t seem to be that expensive. 

So, that settles it, when I get started making the storage bench for our foyer, it’s going to have an inlaid top.  I figure I’ll put some banding around the edge and a nice medallion in the center.  Some nice finish and I’ll have a beautiful piece of unique furniture that can be a family heirloom.  The inlay pieces I looked at online would cost about an extra $70 to complete the project.  Considering most of the wood I’ll use for the bench will be free, that means I’ll get that wonderful piece of furniture for almost no money. 

Anyone else out there ever do this kind of work?

I noticed this post a couple weeks back over at Curious Feet (Venice High School demolition in progress!).  There was also one over at St. Louis Patina as well (Venice High School Demolition).

Both of these posts got me to thinking about my own high school building.  In all honesty, it was nothing spectacular, but it was my first taste of old brick structures.  My home town was a mere 632 people.  There was a small downtown area (with the only 4 way stop in town) with a bank, the post office, hardware store, a restaurant and a few shops.  That area and the school were basically the only brick structures in town.  The rest of town was 50’s & 70’s stick built, ranch homes with few exceptions.

In the early 1900’s my town was a bit larger than it is in present day.  With a large grain elevator and a bustling rail road, things were booming.  However, once the railroad shut down, the town size dwindles like so many that had come before.  Vacant sat the old Opera House for years until the restaurant moved in and remodeled.  It was a pretty cool building in my perspective and I dreamed of some day returning to town and making it into a grand theatre again today. 

I digress, back to the subject at hand.  The posts above made me go in search of pictures of my old high school building.  I couldn’t really find any in my collection of pictures, and finding some online was a nightmare (it seems there is a town of the same name in New South Wales, Australia that is much larger and takes over the Internet searches even if you type in Missouri).  What I did find was a link to my hometown history museum.  In all honesty, I had no idea there was one.  It turns out they are a pretty new organization.

So, I dropped them a line to see if they had some old pictures they could share.  Turns out they were happy to help and dug some up and sent them on over yesterday.  See the picture below:

The picture is actually from 1967. When I was in school in the late 80’s and early 90’s there was a larger, covered porch off the front. One of the reasons it was so difficult to find a picture is that the building has since been torn down.

A bit of history for you.  The first class to graduate high school in my town was back in 1903 (a total of 3 students).  This high school building was not built until 1906 if I remember the corner stone correctly.  I remember science class in the basement that would eventually become condemned prior to the rest of the building due to flooding problems just a few short years after I graduated.  I also remember being in psychology class on the top floor in the back of the building.  Even in my day, the exterior walls were pulling away from the structure and you could literally pass a small folder between the exterior and interior class wall straight into the counselors office next door.

With that being said, I’m not surprised that the building was removed.  The funds to repair the building would not have been worth it considering the school needed more classrooms and there wasn’t much room left on campus without starting to take over the parking lot in the back (in the country, everyone over 16 drives to school, you might even see an occasional tractor in the parking lot).

So, there’s a bit of history on me.  That’s my first intimate experience with old buildings.  While there were others in town I really dreamed of fixing up, I never spent the time in those that I spent in the high school building.  Sometimes, it’s fun to stroll down memory lane.

Check out this post over at Ecology of Absence.  Very cool looking new infill housing in the Gate District.

 This is the kind of infill I like to see in the city.  While it keeps the same scale, proportions and setbacks as the older homes, it still has a bit of it’s own style and flare.  I don’t need everything to look like it was build in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s to be a nice neighborhood.  I think it’s a good thing to mix in old and modern structures.  There’s no reason to be stuck in a single time period.  It’s fun to see the differences yet blend in together in scale.  I say “Well Done”.

My neighborhood e-mail list serve has been talking lately about the Southtown development at Chippewa & Kingshighway.  It’s now been a few years since it was finished and yet it sits mostly empty. 

From all the discussion I’ve gotten a better background on how the development occurred.  For those of you who know, this was an old JC Penny’s sight.  It now has a strip center anchored by Petsmart and Office Max.  There are several out lot buildings nearer the street and a Walgreen’s now on the corner.  Pretty much like any suburban shopping area you’ll find.

So, what I’ve heard from local residents was how much they tried to fight for a more urban development.  They attempted to get Walgreen’s to move their store to the corner and place the parking behind in order to provide pedestrian access.  No such luck, there on the corner is mass of asphalt right in front of the store.

There were also numerous request to do the same with the other areas of the development.  Keep the stores at the street and make them easy to walk into.  Nope, nothing buy asphalt from the street, a thing of beauty huh?

So, the developer came in, speculated on occupancy without getting firm contracts before building, failed to listen to neighbors and built a suburban shopping center in an urban environment.  Now, years later, it is still barren and lifeless. 

This area of Kingshighway could have really been a great part of town, but is instead a eyesore and source of neighborhood shame.  The nice urban shopping on the opposite side of Kingshighway is filled with 3 Pay Day Loans on the same block (2 of them side by side).  Further down the street sits the abandoned Avalon Theatre creating another hole in what could be a very nice street-scape. 

It all makes me wonder about these big commercial developers.  Why would they choose to so completely ignore the neighbors.  I mean, after all, aren’t they the ones who are most likely to patronize the very place they are wanting build?  So much for “The Customer is Always Right.”

Target over at Hampton and Chippewa did a little better job, but mainly because of their lack of real estate.  They made use of space by putting a parking garage under the store get sufficient parking spaces.  You see the same thing done over in Brentwood at Best Buy and The Sports Authority. 

It’s a shame they only do that sort of thing when they don’t physically have enough room for all the parking they want to create.  Too bad they don’t make more use of that in order to bring more stores up to the sidewalk and let pedestrians walk in while still having convenient parking for those who choose to drive.

You might have seen my previous posts about repairing and rebuilding my fence. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m a closet carpenter. I have always enjoyed woodworking and have taken every chance I’ve had to learn and try something new. I get plenty of good use out of my miter saw and table saw.

Well, for me, it looks like the next project is looming on the horizon. In all the rearranging in our house lately, we’ve decided we need to better organize our foyer and put some much better storage in there. This is especially due to the fact that there is no closet for coats and our coat tree was broken during the move. So, we’ve talked about exactly what we need to keep in that area and how we can utilize the space best.

Lucky for me, there really isn’t a good, affordable solution to buy a piece of furniture. That means I get the chance to build it from scratch. Plus, I’ve got a PILE of lumber in the garage and a lot more ready in the basement. In doing demolition work in the basement, I’ve gotten numerous pieces of 1″ x 10″ boards and good old tongue & groove bead board. Both of which were used to build storage rooms in the basement.

So, now is the time I start drawing up plans and we talk about what fits, what will work and how we make it work best for us. Then I’ll be able to start on the construction (maybe as early as Christmas). I’ll have some paint to strip from the boards before I get too far, unless I can find someone with a planer so I can scrape off the layer and true up the boards at the same time.

This is actually one of the reasons I loved architecture and why I did a report on Frank Lloyd Wright while I was in High School. While I wasn’t immensely fond of his actual design work, I was intrigued about how he (and many other architects of that time period) not only designed the house, but loads of custom furniture and lights to go into the house.

Nowadays that seems mostly to have gone by the wayside. An architect is expected to work with an interior designer to pick out pre-made furniture for the space. Few people every have custom furniture made for them other than picking out the upholstery.

Where is the craftsmanship of old? We live in a world of mass-produced houses filled with mass-produced junk. I’m ready for my piece of unique. I LIKE the fact that my house is different than any other I’ve seen in our neighborhood. I can’t wait to have more furniture and things in the house that are unique only to us. I’ll be sure and post some pictures once I get it done.

Well, I had fun this past weekend on a small project with my son. He and I bought some lumber and made a spice rack for the kitchen. We did a good job, including half lap joints and everything. The kitchen is much nicer with the spices up off the counter.

My next project is to fix the fence in our side yard. It needs to be drastically shorter, and I want to change it to a shadowbox type so that the wind can move through it easily. It sits so close to the neighbors house (about 3′) that big wind storms just like to push it over.

All this fun woodworking has got a bug in my ear. You see, we need to replace our old, rotten garage door at some point. The steel insulated types still cost hundreds of dollars and you don’t get much character with it unless you spend a thousand or more. Even then, you have a steel door. So, why can’t I just build my own? I’m thinking it should be simple enough. Kind of like building cabinet doors. Then I got an idea from a manufacturer’s website. They have a model with an internal frame that houses dense foam insulation. That is covered in thin plywood on either side and then has decorative boards on the outside. What an ingenious and simple idea.

I started doing a search to see if I could find any advice on building my own garage door, or maybe even get lucky and find pre-made plans! Well, no such luck. I did find one place that sells a kit for a DIY garage door, but everything is pre-cut, and it’s still $1500 for a 16′ door. I did some quick sketches of my own and some math. I estimated that the lumber and new hardware would run $700 to $800 for a self made wood door.

So, am I crazy? Why don’t people do this… or at least talk about doing this?

There have been numerous blogs and newspaper articles over the past few months about the McKee properties in north St. Louis and the proposed Land Assemblage tax credit bill in the state congress.

It has been extremely interesting to read about much of this and especially to see the videos by PubDef during a recent tour of Old North hosted by local officials for the state politicians.

I have a very simple take on the whole matter. I really don’t understand how anyone can consider it a good idea to give someone money for letting their properties become blighted. Sure, help people or developers out if they are buying properties that are already blighted and in poor shape. But to reward someone for buying perfectly fine, occupied housing and letting it rot into ruin to become blighted is one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard of.

Below is a list of links you might find interesting on the subject. Oh, and do me a favor, be sure to drop your state rep and senator a note letting them know you oppose this new bill and why… I did.

What’s New in Old North - Notice the new developments starting on the 14th street mall in an area McKee is supposedly saving. Here is $30 million being spent without his involvement. Looks to me like they don’t really need his “help.”

PubDef - Lots of good political information and some great videos from the recent tour of the McKee properties given for state legislators.

Ecology of Absence - Authored by Michael Allen who is contributed with first exposing the link between all of the McKee/Blairmont properties.

Happy reading!

I read this article the other day in the Post-Dispatch titled “New Downtowns Cultivate Old Ambiance.” The story, by Stephene Deere, is describing the changes taking place in many of the suburban communities around St. Louis. People are learning that the separationist mentality of the house, yard and white picket fence isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Cities and developers are starting fresh by “building” new downtowns comprising mixed use developments. They term the style “New Urbanism.”

These places are trying to resemble areas like The Loop in U. City or the South Grand area as well. What really cracks me up is that there is this money being spent in the suburbs to try and build more like the city was built 100 years ago. Look at the development and style of areas like Soulard, South Grand, Lafayette Square and you see exactly what they are trying to duplicate. So, why do these people long for “New Urbanism” when REAL Urbanism is just down the road?

The other thing that really cracks me up, is the struggles with development within the city of St. Louis. Neighbors are having to stand up and protest as developers are trying to come into the city and make it look more like the suburbs! If they really understood “New Urbanism” in the suburbs, why can’t they understand that we moved here because it already exists, we don’t want them to take it away from us by building a bunch of vinyl clad compounds that force us to drive to everything.

Thankfully, the city of St. Louis has a number of residents who are very actively looking out for us all. Just a couple of favorites here for you to look up if you get a chance:
Steve Patterson - Urban Review
Michael Allen - Ecology of Absence
Steve Wilke-Shapiro (et. al) - 15th Ward St. Louis