So Barnes Hospital gets Forest Park East, and it’s an anti-climactic outcome. But there was some drama in the form of St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green and Board of Alderman president Jim Shrewsbury being dissenting voices about the deal. It doesn’t take much imagination or verification to figure out that they both got a stern talking to about kicking up a needless ruckus over this deal. So, if you have to cave in, you might as well get something useful out of the capitulation.

What truly bothers me, though, is that the extraction of a little lemonade from a sack of lemons (aka, politics as usual) is being spun as a racial issue, with Green cast as the Bad Girl Who Almost Ruined It For Everyone. It’s dirty and transparent politics. So, it was a pleasant surprise for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to print this reader’s letter on February 28th, 2007:

Darlene Green: profile in courage

Former President John F. Kennedy would be proud of Comptroller Darlene Green. As she navigates through the decision-making process concerning whether or not St. Louis will allow a powerful hospital to extend its lease of part of Forest Park, Ms. Green has displayed many of the characteristics Mr. Kennedy wrote about in “Profiles In Courage.”

Ms. Green has been able to stand up to society’s pressures while she tries to make life better for her constituents in North St. Louis. Ms. Green told a powerful institution no, she told powerful political players no and she told some of her allies no. Most importantly, and I think Mr. Kennedy would agree, Ms. Green is able to compromise to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.

The people of St. Louis should thank Ms. Green for her courage and continue to vote for her and not be swayed by any retaliatory campaigns waged by her political adversaries.

Edward Beck | Ferguson

While his words are a tad overdramatic, I wholly agree with the point, and it reminded me of the last time she spoke out of turn.

When the City wanted to hand over millions of dollars to Pyramid, Green spoke up about that being a bad business deal. It’s one of her job duties to protect the city’s fiscal interests, but it was useless for her to apply fiscal logic because the deal was going through no matter what. Still, she recognized right and wrong and was brave enough to go on record as strongly disagreeing with the deal. This kind of ethical behavior may have her marked for a horse head in her bed, and I admire her resolve in trying to represent some form of honesty as she commits political suicide. Someone with that kind of integrity can serve better outside of politics.

So, onto the 9.4 acres itself.

I once spent a summer and fall on this property taking tennis lessons. The instructor was always late, so we’d hang out in the playground, or I’d take b&w photos of the sculpture garden shown in these 2 photos. The racquet ball courts were rather photogenic, too, and I was pleased to see a haunting night time photo of them by Eric Post about a year later.

On the first day of lessons, a fellow student said, “I never knew this place was here.” To which another student replied, “Yeah, it’s mainly for the Barnes people.”

While we played tennis, Barnes Hospital loomed over us to the north and the east while Barnes employees parked in the garage lurking under the ground we ran upon. It was obvious that Barnes employees were using the facilities while we were there.

When I went digging for the negatives of these photos, I chuckled upon seeing my handwriting on the negative sheet identifying it as “Barnes.”

Meaning, I always naturally assumed this land belonged to BJC, as there was nothing to indicate otherwise. To be honest, I was shocked to learn this land belonged to Forest Park when all this controversy began last year. But then it all made sense since I could never quite understand why the hospital was so nice about providing these wonderful park-like accommodations to their employees. Turns out it was Forest Park providing amenities that only Barnes employees knew about.

I understand and agree with the Forest Park Protectors side of the argument, but to have ever stepped foot on that property is to understand that the horse done fled the barn long ago. Trying to close the stall after the fact is a moot point. All this circumstantial evidence and political/financial power doesn’t make it right, but it was rendered inevitable decades ago.

It’s kind of sweet that City Hall and BJC even let any of us in on this at all, and that they were nice enough to throw some chump change at the city parks system. It’s kind of like getting a year’s supply of Rice-A-Roni for having been a contestant on The Jokers Wild. Hey, worse things than this can happen, and they always do.

UPDATE: Boulevard Heights

Here’s where we were with this story shortly after Christmas.
And above is the next chapter. The first houses are going in on the west end of the property, and I was relieved with what I saw for a couple of reasons.

#1. The front of the house is facing out to the street, just like all the other houses in the area.
#2. The distance between the front of the house and the street is just about the same as all the other homes front yards. That does leave room for a sidewalk, so there’s no excuse not to have them.

There’s no way of yet knowing what these structures will be clad with. The website for Rowles still hasn’t updated even though they want us to keep checking back soon.

The website address given on the sign above is not yet ready for business, either, claiming to be under construction. It’s a tad suspicious when the contractor is actually building while the folks on the selling end are slumbering. Then again, this is a privately funded housing venture; Rowles is not getting, or asking for, any money from the city. Which makes them a very rare breed, indeed: a developer who feels the risk of building in the city is small enough to forego tax breaks, TIFs and special favors. They are willing to gamble at fair market rates. Because independent, self-sustained financing is such a ballsy move into today’s city development climate, I’m willing to suspend disbelief and cut them a lot of slack.

OK, I did get a little pissed when they pulled the scorched earth maneuver, and plowed over all the mature trees on the acreage. In hopes that understanding would calm the anger, I checked in with a construction estimator pal of mine on why 99.9% of housing developers shave the trees. His thoughts, paraphrased:

They need a clean slate for configuring the maximum number of units onto a plot of land, and trees just complicate the math. Plus, no one can accurately predict how far the roots of these trees have traveled. Unknowingly destroying a major root could cause a slow death resulting in the tree toppling over sometime in the future, or roots could eventually worm their way into brand new sewer and plumbing lines. Both of these root scenarios can translate into future lawsuits, and that costs the developer money. Yes, it’s always about the money, and it’s cheaper to just bulldoze the trees over and plant some grass than it is to rearrange an entire project for several trees.

So I don’t like the answer, but it is an answer. Having things explained is always better than the dead silence of “you’ll take what we give you.”

UPDATE: South Warson Road

Here is a photographically detailed story of the house shown above.

And here is what is being erected in its place. This thing is beyond massive! As many times as I drive by it, I still haven’t seen all of it, or even half begun to figure out what it’s all about, Alfie.

Let’s review the house across the street from Villa Supersize (above). It’s fairly representative of most of the houses in this immediate neighborhood, even of some of the remaining original homes in the general area: low slung and sprawling among the greenery.

ABOVE: Not only is the house gone, but so is that car!
Teardowns are a controversial and heated topic. Private property rights should prevail, so whatever someone chooses to do with property they’ve purchased is fair by law. Then again, muncipalities have created an awful lot of laws to govern the aspect of Fitting In With The Joneses.

I have a propensity for favoring mid-century modern architecture, so will always be broken hearted when someone demolishes a worthy example just to replace it with a Steroid Palace. But I also accept, and truly appreciate, that everyone has different tastes. There’s room enough on this planet for endless variety, and people wouldn’t spend that many millions on custom home building unless they really, truly loved the design.

Bearing all this in mind, what is the fundamental problem I have with the typical structure that replaces a teardown?

The typical teardown replacement structure flaunts an arrogant disregard of its surroundings. It’s a new homeowner willfully ignoring what’s around them in pursuit of what they want. Fundamentally, it’s the selfishness of intent that makes me boil.

When one buys into a neighborhood, that means there are other people living in other houses all around you. That’s what constitutes a neighborhood. Most neighborhoods – even brand new ones – are built with a similar look, a similar scale, a prevailing theme in mind. We usually choose where we want to live based on those physical factors (well, along with what we can afford), and those physical factors dictate the feel and distinction of each area.

When someone builds a new house totally out of scale to the rest of the neighborhood, it automatically sends the wrong signal to the neighbors: I could care less about what’s around me; it’s all about all the square footage I want. That kind of disregard is mighty un-neighborly, especially when some of these neighborhoods are desirable because of their friendliness and sense of community.

To plop down an inappropriately scaled house among appropriately scaled existing homes is truly the equivalent of blockbusting. Evidence of that is when the first McMansion goes up, others soon follow. And how are people able to buy up those adjacent properties? Because the original neighbors hightail it out…”there goes the neighborhood.”

Not so long ago, it used to be the first black family moving into a white block that caused neighbors to flee. Nowadays, it’s square footage. All that square footage is not a measure of success; it’s just wasted space with the potential to erode established communities. Big new homes may increase property tax dollars, but those dollars don’t watch your house while you’re on vacation or shovel half your sidewalk when it snows. A disdain of the human factor is what riles me up about teardown replacements.

I am a severe cold wimp, and knowing that I had to go out and photograph in 14 degree, snow-covered farm flatland filled me with inexpressible fear. Once at the Mascoutah, Illinois destination, I was overwhelmed with how peaceful and beautiful this plot of land was, even in the dead of winter. And there was a Quonset Hut!

This farm was typical in that there are many outbuildings, and I’m always fascinated by their kind of simple geometry springing out of stark, flat land. Add to that a white ground against a weak, wavering sky and it becomes photographic nirvana.

When I freeze-frame surroundings through a camera eye, the rest of the world drops away. It’s my purest form of being calmly and peacefully detached from my body, a state that sex, drugs and spirituality try to get us to with varying results. This is the poetic way of saying that I completely forgot how damn cold it was while obsessively snapping every square foot of the property.

Granted, most of these snowy shots have that classic Photography 101 look to them, but objects against snow tend to feel that way, in general. Obviously I feel no shame about that since I’m sharing them with you. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to Mascoutah, a town I look forward to getting more familiar with once spring has sprung.

Christy Avenue,
South St. Louis City, MO
On the stretch of Christy Avenue between Eichelberger and Gravois sits a rather large house that tends to blend into the background. It’s a most unusual and distinctive house, yet it’s “grayness” may be what causes it to meld into the background of a row of brick buildings.

I get the biggest kick out of it’s repetition of broken pediments, which was a popular trick of the American Greek Revival style of the early 1800s. I love how both pediments invade the space of the 2nd-story windows, as if someone really wanted that Greek look but didn’t want the expense of appropriately altering the windows.

The pediments needing elbow room float over the broad curved, Neocolonial porch opening of a house that looks like a pared down Eastlake Victorian style farm house that dots the Midwest rural landscape. All of this on one city house and it still tends to disappear into the background! For being a sedate smorgasbord of architectural ideas is why I love this house.

A good friend of mine just launched a blog. M.O.R.E., which stands for Modern Options in Real Estate. She is a buyer’s agent with her own firm, and a deep passion for modern design.

She’s found herself at a crossroads: the St. Louis real estate market considers most mid-century modern homes nothing more than teardowns, yet she hears from many out-of-state people relocating to the St. Louis area who are keenly interested in exactly the homes that listing agents consider trash.

In the course of researching appropriate homes for these out-of-towners, Marla found that the local R.E. market provides no standards for identifying MCM properties. She hopes to correct that oversight. The public’s lack of exposure to modern design and curbing senseless teardown practices are some other issues she wants to tackle. But all great plans must have a starting point, so we now have her blog.

She just found a Harris Armstrong-designed home that went up for sale earlier this week. And if you’re looking for a modern dwelling, she’s obviously the lady to talk to.

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