CBS’ ‘Sunday Morning’ To Look At Landmark/Preservation Issues
Sunday August 21, 2005 Martha Teichner, Sunday Morning Senior Correspondent, will look at three recent landmark/preservation issues in New York City, Chicago and St. Louis.
NYC’s Two Columbus Circle, a 1964 modern building designed by Edward Durell Stone, has been the center of controversy among preservationists over a plan to raze/alter the structure. The Landmarks Preservation Commission has, so far, refused to even hold a public hearing to consider the building for Landmark status.
Chicago’s North Shore has seen a rash of McMansions built on the sites of more modest houses, including some significant mid-century modern homes.
In St. Louis preservationists lost a battle to save the Century Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, for a parking garage. Much of the controversy around this project was the fact the National Trust for Historic Preservation sided with developers in razing the historic marble-clad structure citing it was necessary to save another historic building, St. Louis’ Old Post Office.
‘Sunday Morning’ airs at 9A.M. Eastern/8A.M. Central.
– Steve
This is what most infuriates me:
“Much of the controversy around this project was the fact the National Trust for Historic Preservation sided with developers in razing the historic marble-clad structure citing it was [b]necessary to save another[/b] historic building, St. Louis’ Old Post Office.”
As if the OPO was about to fall down, if Stogel hadn’t done anything. Maybe the media should do a background check on who previously owned that OPO building such that they left in such “dire disrepair” that it absolutely needed this strange, convoluted financing scheme to “save” the OPO.
I think our City should consider suing the OPO’s previous owners for leaving us such a “disasterous shell” of a building that “desperately needed” these subsidies.
Afterall, the City sued the previous owner of the Syndicate Trust/Century for his malicious ownership. But oh wait, that was because he wanted to tear the buildings down.
And of course, the OPO’s previous owners actually mothballed the structure after its 1980s renovation fairly well, leaving it the perfect distraction for an insider deal seeking developer fees for a mayoral friend, dependent on the demo and construction included for the 9th St. Garage-Mahal.
For the “Sunday Morning” spot note that NYC and Chicago are about mid-century modern architecture, while STL is still stuck mucking up 19th century buildings.
And if Chicago – a city proud of it’s over-abundance of architectural wealth – is just NOW learning to appreciate modern, STL won’t come around to preserving our 20th century legacy until about 2065.
And at that time, the Old Post Office will STILL be waiting to “save downtown St. Louis.”
Well Toby, it looks like Philip Johnson’s Modernist GenAmerica building at 7th/Market will be saved, despite its Trova sculptures and concrete plaza adding little to downtown street life. At the same time, unless something of greater density and design were proposed, I think this building should be kept.
Don’t get me wrong, I like many Modernist structures. As an example, the Southtown Famous was much nicer than what is there now, albeit with its huge parking in rear.
I guess the style can be nice, just the siting of these structures, being in the age of the automobile, often overlooked pedestrian scale.
Actually, I’m not at all a building hugger. I didn’t want to save the Century for its unique marble facade or its age. Rather, I always think any building coming down, of any age or style, should only be demolished, when something of improved design, use and activity is taking its place. And of course, a parking garage, even if eerily resembling its predecessor is not an improved addition to the built environment.
Responding to the comments about the previous owner of the Old Post Office, the GSA signed off on the whole thing BEFORE the public meeting where the GSA promised that they would “leave no stone unturned” in looking for alternatives to demo of the Century?
I got that from reading the Century website Steve linked to. It’s in the uncontroverted facts thing under infuriating legal documents.
So the GSA wanted to dump the OPO from their inventory, made up their mind that the developers would get their way and demo the Century, then pretty much lied to everyone at the public meeting.
Shouldn’t some people at GSA have to be held accountable for lying? If they had just admitted that they signed off on the deal before the meeting, lawsuits and all that could have started sooner. Instead, they led everyone, including me, to believe they were still looking for a better plan.
If you really want to get riled up with the GSA, read the infuriating legal documents. I read them and I really am infuriated.
Didn’t the GSA want to get rid of the OPO for decades, basically? Remember the failed shopping mall / offices inside – that was the first attempt to redevelop the OPO, in the 1980s. A special federal law had to be passed to convince GSA to let it happen.
For some reason, in the 1980s a whole bunch of new indoor retail spaces opened in downtown: the OPO, Union Market, St. Louis Centre, Union Station. As of now, none of them are a resounding success. Ground-floor retail that fronts onto the street, instead of a small mall, is the way to go – just like in the old days!
The OPO is a great building, but it is hard to do much with it other than institutional usage. In that respect, I suppose Webster U and the Appellate Courts are appropriate users of the space.
Any idea whether the “Old Post Office Station” of the U.S. Postal Service – currently located at 4th and Olive – will be relocating back into the OPO once its all finished?
The Century, on the other hand, had a lot more flexible interior spaces. Why it had to go, I’ll never really know.
As for the Modernist stuff – some of it is cool, some of it I can do without. Most Modernist houses are in pretty suburban locales with limited street visibility, on purpose, I suspect. The General American building is architecturally interesting, albeit rather sterile. Somebody could do something interesting with that front entry plaza, like a huge sidewalk cafe perhaps – almost entirely sheltered from rain!