Moloney Electric in Walnut Park

It was a January 2nd phone conversation with my Father, and I don’t recall what got us on the topic, but we started talking about Walnut Park, a neighborhood in North St. Louis.  He began reminiscing about what that neighborhood was like well over 40 years ago, and named all of the companies and manufacturing firms (like the Chrysler plant, the small ammunition plant, etc.) in the area, and how all those employees populated the Walnut Park neighborhood.

As is the topography of his amazing memory, my Father started rattling off the names of companies, street by street, a list of by-gone firms that either folded, merged or moved their operations outside of American soil, and how this killed the vitality of the surrounding area.  There’s no disputing that population density follows jobs.

As my Father walked down memory lane, he stumbled on the name of the long-time electric company on Semple Avenue.  He described the building, what they manufactured, but that he couldn’t remember its name brought the conversation to a close.  On January 3rd, there was this brief message from him on my answering machine: “Moloney Electric.  The name of the place on Semple was Moloney Electric.”

On January 9th, he calls me back to say that the site of the January 8th ABB shooting IS the old Moloney Electric building.  A search of Moloney Electric brings up a history of acquisitions which eventually resulted in ABB at its present St. Louis location.

Considering our earlier conversations about the building and the tragedy that took place shortly thereafter, I think I’m going to lay off for a little bit on having these types of historical conversations with my Father, Built Environment Nostradamus.

Anti-Wrecking Ball Thanks

The Anti-Wrecking Ball Holiday Kegger was a qualified success.  Success is measured by how many kegs were emptied (2) and how much of our lawyer fees were paid down (most of it!).

Thank you to every single person who came out to the inaugural event at the Old North St. Louis Community Gallery (gorgeous space in the most optimistic part of town) and for each person who contributed time, talent, booze and money to our adventures in preservation law.

You can see a goodly number of these lovely people in these event photos.

And here’s a brief video of the evening.

And as our adventure continues, you can donate at any time through the Friends of San Luis Pay Pal account.

The Baden Triangle

Intersection of North Broadway & Halls Ferry Road
Baden, MO

Baden is the northernmost burg in St. Louis City, established in 1876.  Because of its location as the terminus of major transportation lines, it became a popular gateway to North County. Or put another way, after World War 2, Baden was like training wheels for veteran city dwellers pedaling toward suburban living.

During the Great Suburban Exodus, the building shown below made an impressive effort to embrace the mid-century modern frontier by donning a sleek and colorful metal screen suit in the mid-1960s.

The heart of the downtown Baden Business District straddles North Broadway and is still mostly intact, building-wise.  It is easy to conjure how it worked and felt in the first half of the 20th century, and will be relatively easy to revive as America re-embraces the logic of density in the coming decades.

The Y intersection of  Halls Ferry & N. Broadway - known as “The Wedge” by locals - was a bit more flexible at changing faces to keep up with the changing times.  Driving up the hill on the Halls Ferry side is like time traveling through architectural styles, from newest to oldest.

From the street, The Wedge looks and feels like one large scalene triangle of a building, but an aerial view reveals that 7 separate buildings make up this tableau (I’m excluding the white building on the northeast corner because it’s an unattached 1970 addition to The Wedge that looks and feels completely separate).

By following the history of these buildings and its past occupants, you get a clear picture of the dominance (before WW2) and decline (post WW2) of the Baden Business District.

At the southwest tip of the triangle is 8312 Halls Ferry, built in 1925, which got a new Art Deco-ish face right around 1944 when Baumgartner Kummer Realty moved in.  In 1948, it became strictly Paul Kummer Realty, and he stayed put until 1983.  Note the display window; is this where he posted enticing pictures of the new modern ranches in North County?  It has been vacant since 1986.

Even though the next two buildings up the hill share the same pink fiberglass and burgundy Vitrolite tile as Kummer Realty, they are two separate buildings, both built in 1925, but obviously re-clad at the same time.

8314 Halls Ferry (above) has been home to John Flood, a paper hanging contractor (1932), Charles Schmidt Jewelers (1948-1960), Hartig Jewelers (1961- 65) and Baden Jewelry till 1968, when Paul Kummer Realty took it over. His business was obviously booming! It sat vacant from 1977 till the early 1990s, when a couple of outlet stores moved in, but then left.  It remains vacant.

8318 Halls Ferry was Lungstras Dyeing & Cleaning Co. until it became Rockwood Cleaners in the late 1950s, then Hampton Cleaners & Laundry from 1961 till the building went vacant in 1966 and remained that way until a series of businesses came and went from 1999 till 2006.  The space is currently vacant.

The building at 8324 Halls Ferry went up in 1927 and started life as Louis Becherer Hardware.  I’m supposing the the missing cladding on the ground floor was Vitrolite that went up when the space became Leyerle Jewelry Co. from 1941 - 1983 (getting the impression that Baden was the place to buy jewelry?).  The upstairs was an optometrists office for a bit of the 1930s before it converted over to residential rental.  Since 1992, nothing much has gone on with either floor of the building, other than being stripped of its pretties.

We move up the hill to the L-shaped Ludwig Building, an impressive 4-story affair built in 1929 in the classic urban tradition of retail on the ground floor and apartments above (43 total).  Most everything about this building has remained virtually unchanged, which may account for its current sad state.  More on that in a second.

Storefront 8332 (shown above) started life as Baden Delicatessen and then became Howard’s Cleaners from 1941 to 1958 (how many cleaners did they need in one block?). From 1958 - 1990 it became a part of LeRose Flower Shop at 8330 Halls Ferry, and then converted back to single occupancy for Miss Connie’s Fashions and Matthews Realty & Investment. It has been vacant for most of the 2000s.

Here is the only entrance to the Ludwig Apartments that remained open in summer 2008, and at that time, there were occupants.

Here’s the overall corner view of the Ludwig Building, showing how grandly it occupies the summit of The Wedge.  Note window A/C units in some of the windows and know that the apartments have never been updated.

At the end of 2008, all remaining residents were evicted, new owners bought the place for a song in early 2009, and now every entrance and storefront is boarded up.

From street view, the building is still remarkably intact, and I’m picturing a brave and adventurous developer knocking down partition walls to make larger apartments or even loft condos. The potential for this building is huge, as it is for everything in The Wedge.

The corner storefront of the Ludwig Building was a Velvet Freeze ice cream parlor from 1941 - 1999, and that is as it should be for such a great location.

This is the Muriel Street side of the Ludwig, and note that - somehow - the original transom glass has survived over all these storefronts! Attorney Edward Rothganger had an office at 848 Muriel from 1938 - 58, at which point The Baden News Press (yes, the town had its own newspaper until 1977!) expanded into this spot.

This side of the Ludwig had better luck with  retail remaining, with Forever Diva’s (at 844 Muriel) being in business until everyone was evicted in winter 2008.  Heading down the alley (to the left in the above picture), there is a long row of sealed overhead doors, which meant the apartments surely took pride in boasting “enclosed” or “off-street parking” as a perk for renters.  With a little imagination, it could be a selling point again…

And we head down Muriel to North Broadway, where we return to the building that started our tour - The Medical Center.  This 2-story brick building went up around 1925, and the place got a new face right around 1966 (see how the metal screen fastened to the brick).

8315 is the portion of this building at the tip of the wedge, which originally housed the Baden Building & Finance Corporation upstairs and Herman Ludwig Drugs at street level.  In 1941, Boesel’s Royal Drugs took over the space until closing up shop in 1983. A Dollar Store and a beauty supply went in during the 1980s and 90s, but the entire building has been vacant since the City took it over in 1999.

Here we have the Baden Medical Center proper, so known by the fabulous stainless signage that remains in place to this day. In 1966, 7 doctors had practices inside, dwindling down to 4 by 1973, and one doctor and one attorney by 1986.

In the early 2000s, the City spent quite a bit of money to build a spiffy, multi-level bus stop at the tip of The Wedge, which also signaled that these buildings were ripe for redevelopment.  But the bus stop is now overgrown and littered, and the For Sale signs on the Medical Center are a little moldy. But as long as they don’t tear them down, hope remains.

See more photos of The Baden Triangle here.

A Fresh Coat of Paint

Intersection of Washington Blvd. & Jefferson Avenue
North St. Louis City, MO

The buildings on both corners of the west side of this intersection have got a new coat of paint, and the effect is absolutely stunning.  It looks like colored eggs in an Easter basket.

When we get a new hairdo or whiten the teeth, it spiffs us up without changing the basic essence of who we are.  Same goes for buildings.  A little patching, a little paint and some prideful TLC goes a long way towards boosting civic self esteem.  Thank you to these building owners for their fabulous efforts.

Richard Baron on Missed Opportunities

The St. Louis Beacon recently published a conversation with developer Richard Baron, full of illuminating opinions and something I didn’t know previously: Lambert Airport could have been in Waterloo, Illinois.

I am elated he brought up and elaborated on one ultra important item: Metro Link Stations:

“There was the situation with Metro. When all of that started back in the ’80s there was no plan to take advantage of these transit stations — to build housing around them, retail around them. To use them as an economic driver, as was done in many other cities around the U.S. when light rail went in. Here was this enormous investment that was made, and look at the stations, and they’re bleak.

“You reach a point where you get terribly frustrated because the lack of leadership in this town is palpable — both on the public side and the private side. Go to Atlanta or Minneapolis, and the energy level and the effort on the part of the public-private side — partnerships, foundations — everybody is pulling together and have had a much better success than in St. Louis. We’ve had passive leadership, a watering down of the executives of corporations that have left. We have had executives who have no real identification with the city — who came in from out of town and live in the county and don’t relate to the city much. And it’s just a lot of little things that have exacerbated the problem.”

Read the rest of the article here.

And if you haven’t already, The Beacon is a must for followers of the STL built environment, along with Building Blocks at the Post-Dispatch.

North St. Louis MCM: Norwood Square

Guess where the picture above was taken: Ballwin? Florissant? Mehlville?

When faced with low-slung, stylish 1960s ranch houses casually strewn amongst profuse greenery, these would be valid guesses. But instead, we are exploring Norwood Square in North St. Louis City.

Norwood Square is actually a court (as shown in the aerial photo above), a half block northeast of the intersection of Union Boulevard and St. Louis Avenue in the Arlington neighborhood. And it doesn’t take a bird’s eye view to get the feeling that a giant scoop of the city grid was whisked away by a mega melon baller.

On the ground, it is rather dramatic to see rows of deeply urban, 2-story brick residential buildings built between the 1890s - 1920s abruptly bisected by a swirl of deeply suburban, mid-century modern frosted sugar cookies. As you fleetingly catch glimpses of the original natives from inside Norwood Square, it feels like the ranch homes are circling the wagons ’round to protect their fabulousness from hostile forces.

This mirage of displaced MCM sweetness is cited as the last new housing built in this part of North St. Louis.  City record show that these 40-odd homes were built between 1961 - 1974, with the bulk of them going up between 1961 - 1966. They range from 982 - 1,888 square feet, with a median square footage of 1,450.

The circle that is Norwood Square is divided into East, West, North and South Norwood, which puts 4 of the houses (like the one above - which cleverly wraps its footprint around the curve) in the odd position of not knowing exactly which street they are on! Is their mailing address North Norwood or East Norwood, and how confusing is it to new mailmen on this beat?

So what’s the story with Norwood? Why was this exotic dollop dropped here, and what was torn down to make that so?

Having been told stories of Public Schools Stadium, I wondered if Norwood Square is what popped up in its place.  But the stadium was a block east of here, on Kingshighway, and when it was demolished in the late 1960s, most of Norwood Square was built and firmly inhabited.

Noticing that a few of the homes have some serious sink issues, I wondered if it was built atop the quarry that was supposedly shut down sometime in the 1940s because some kids accidentally died while playing there.  But no. The memories of some old school North St. Louisans’ remember the quarry at Kingshighway and Lexington, a good 2 blocks north east of here.

So, for now, the why it appeared and what disappeared to make it so remains a mystery.  Please do share any historical information you may have in exchange for the details I share with you here.  Like the snazzy tile work that graces this split-level, above.

Or the swanky pendant light fixture and concrete block screen of this entrance.

From quick visual inspections over the course of several years, most all of the homes are still in good condition, always the sign of well-liked buildings. Many of them (see above) are meticulously preserved and cared for, a heart-warming sign of intense pride in their ranch house alien. Only rarely have I seen for sale signs on the yards, so I wonder if there might still be a hefty amount of original owners in tow, or a lot of kids inheriting them from the folks.

This home is the equivalent of the half man/half woman Halloween costume!

To see more photos and details of Norwood Square, please visit the B.E.L.T. supplement at Flickr.

Facing out onto St. Louis Avenue, like sentries protecting their MCM turf,  is a short row of 2-family versions.

The chalk and cheese concept of Norwood Square is not wholly unique.  Something similar was done in South St. Louis with Marla Court.  Or there’s Darla Court in the inner-ring ‘burb of Jennings. So, it’s not uncommon, but it’s always a pleasant surprise, yes?

UPDATE

Steve Patterson - who first told me about the subdivision several years ago - sent along this aerial map from 1958. Seems the street grid was long interrupted in this part of town, and look at all those mature trees! This would also bear out the info Rick Bonasch shared about the original site being a dump.