High Rise Public Housing Towers in St. Louis

High-Rise Public Housing Towers In St. Louis, Missouri

Prepared for the St. Louis Housing Authority

Prepared by

Michael R. Allen, Principal Author Lydia Slocum, Contributor Tia Shepard, Contributor

March 2014


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Table of Contents

1. Background and Methodology 2 Background 2 Methodology 2 2. Context: Public Housing Towers in St. Louis 4 Summary 4 Public Housing Towers, 1949-1966 4 High-Rise Residential Architecture in St. Louis, 9

1948-1969 HUD Creates the “Turnkey” Program, 1966 11 Turnkey Public Housing Underway in St. Louis 13 Turnkey Towers in St. Louis, 1968-1972 14 The St. Louis Housing Authority and Turnkey 16

Projects After 1974 3. Bibliography 20 4. Figures 22 5. Appendix: Survey of Turnkey Public Housing Towers 39 Summary 39 Euclid Plaza Apartments 40 James House Apartments 44 Kingsbury Terrace Apartments 48 Parkview Apartments 53 West Pine Apartments 58


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1. Background and Methodology Project Background On August 21, 2012, the St. Louis Housing Authority entered into a contract with the Preservation Research Office to undertake two activities required under a Memorandum of Agreement with the State Historic Preservation Office regarding the demolition of the Blumeyer Family Tower:

Photographic documentation of the Blumeyer Family Tower;

A context study for the high-rise public housing towers owned by the St. Louis Housing Authority.

Preservation Research Office developed a summary context narrative related to the construction of high-rise public housing towers in St. Louis from 1949 through 1971. To assist with future cultural resources management, the authors included an appendix with historic information on the following five towers currently owned by the St. Louis Housing Authority: Building Name Address Date of

Construction Architects

Euclid Plaza Apartments

5310 N. Euclid Avenue 1969 Peckham &Guyton

James House Apartments

4310 St. Ferdinand Avenue

1970 Schwarz & Van Hoefen

Kingsbury Terrace Apartments

5655 Kingsbury Avenue 1969 Stanford G. Brooks

Parkview Apartments 4451 Forest Park Avenue

1971 Jack H. Tyrer

West Pine Apartments 4490 West Pine Boulevard

1970 Arthur J. Sitzwohl

The Warwood building, originally built for the Authority as a high-rise public housing tower under the Turnkey program, was not included because it is no longer under Authority ownership. Methodology Staff from the Preservation Research Office developed a research plan for this survey that included investigation of archival sources, field visits to each tower and examination of literature that established context for the Turnkey program. The primary source of archival information was the St. Louis Housing Authority information files on the Turnkey program and on each of the towers. The Missouri History Museum Library and Collection Center and the St. Louis History Collection at the St. Louis Public Library were other archival sources. Building data on each project came from building permit records in the Records Retention Division of the Office of the Comptroller, City of St. Louis, and the St. Louis Daily Record.


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Michael Allen and Lydia Slocum conducted site visits to examine and photograph each building in June 2013. Photography was used to evaluate integrity of each resources based on original renderings and historic photographs in the St. Louis Housing Authority files. Based on review comments from the State Historic Preservation Office and the Cultural Resources Office of the City of St. Louis, the authors revised and reorganized this document for final submission in February 2014.


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3. Context: Public Housing Towers in St. Louis

Summary The St. Louis Housing Authority (SLHA) built 13 projects between 1949 and 1972 that included high-rise residential towers as either all or part of the program for housing projects. These projects included seven projects that the Authority developed between 1949 and 1966 utilizing Title III of the 1949 United States Housing Act, whose funding conjoined public housing and slum clearance activities. The seven tower projects from the Housing Act period all replaced cleared neighborhoods. The downturn in quality of life at the high-rise Housing Act projects became publicized in the 1960s, especially at the combined Pruitt-Igoe project. In response, federal planners created “Turnkey I” in 1966 as a mechanism to avoid concentrations of poverty and to allow local housing authorities greater flexibility amid shrinking funds available under the 1949 Housing Act. Between 1967 and 1972, the St. Louis Housing Authority completed nine new housing projects utilizing the new Turnkey I program, with towers included in the programs of six projects. St. Louis’ Turnkey I projects largely were successful, with five of the six towers built using the program still owned and operated by the St. Louis Housing Authority. The Housing Act-era towers, on the other hand, have all been demolished except the last tower at the Arthur Blumeyer Homes that is slated to be demolished this year. Public Housing Towers, 1949-1966 By 1966, SLHA had completed ten large-scale public housing developments housing 30,000 people with construction costs of over $100 million.1 The city first saw public housing, following some early private mass housing projects, after the passage of the Housing Act of 1937 authorized the creation of local housing authorities to receive federal grants for the construction of housing projects. St. Louis established the St. Louis Housing Authority (SLHA), which used funds to construct multi-block low-rise developments north and south of downtown in “slum” neighborhoods. SLHA opened Carr Square Village in 1941 and Clinton-Peabody Terrace in 1942 (figure 2). The two projects were segregated originally, with Carr Square Village reserved for African-Americans and Clinton-Peabody Terrace for whites. The projects fit neatly into surrounding neighborhoods, and left the street grids intact. In 1947, St. Louis approved a new Comprehensive Plan that recommended sweeping reconstruction of the city’s oldest neighborhoods surrounding downtown. The plan called for replacement of thousands of substandard housing units with new public housing. However, the funding mechanism available under the 1937 act would not support mass construction, and there were few sources of funding for the property acquisition and clearance needed for the plan’s somewhat utopian recommendations. St. Louis and other cities with similar plans received a major stimulus in 1949, when Congress approved the United States Housing Act. Reauthorization of the Housing Act of 1937 amid widespread opposition from real estate interests and conservative elected officials led to packaging public housing into a larger urban renewal program.2 In fact, public housing funding only narrowly avoided being removed from the final passage of the Housing Act. The Housing Act inverted the earlier law’s requirement that one unit of “substandard” housing be demolished for each unit of new public housing to place slum clearance first and public housing

1 City Plan Commission, Saint Louis Development Program (1975), p. 18.

2 Edward G. Goetz, New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice & Public Housing Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 2013), p. 29.


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development second.3 Thus, two new sources of funding came with the new Housing Act: Title I, which provided $1 billion for purchase and demolition of neighborhoods defined as slums; and Title III, which provided $1.5 billion to finance 810,000 units of public housing and $308 million to cover the gap between rents and construction costs.4 The new funds “inspired a sense of optimism about the possibilities of reviving the American city,” according to historian Alexander Von Hoffman.5 The joining of federal public housing and housing clearance funds ensured that almost all new projects would occupy the sites of low-income, often African-American neighborhoods. While city planners including St. Louis’ Harland Bartholomew welcomed the joint funding as mechanism to rehouse people living in substandard housing, the reality betrayed flaws in the Housing Act. Bartholomew estimated that 35% of the city’s land mass was occupied by substandard housing.6 Historian Edward L. Goetz writes of the promise of rehousing that “in the end the program never fulfilled that promise and in the end demolished much more low-cost housing than it ever built.”7 The St. Louis projects built under the Housing Act fit the national pattern in entailing the loss of more housing stock than what was built, and leading to more exodus from the clearance areas than return. Additionally, post-1949 housing projects in St. Louis initially would reinforce racial segregation of the city.8 Still, by 1957, U.S. News and World Report reported that American cities had built over 142 slum-clearance projects at a total cost of $42 million public funds and $2 billion in private funds.9 Many of these projects were like the ones in St. Louis, embracing an influential vision of “tower-in-the-park” advanced by the architect Le Corbusier as far back as the 1920s.10 Le Corbusier’s famous Plan Voisin called for replacing a dense section of Paris with a utopian cluster of cross-axis residential towers set on wide lawns and placed in a rigid grid formation (figure 1). Corbusier’s vision would be repeated in later plans advanced by other architects and embraced by the International Congresses for Modern Architecture at its fifth congress in 1937. American architects and planners embraced Corbusier’s ideals for ordered space and residential towers especially as remedies for urban decay and overcrowding. St. Louis’ towers, with modern brick-clad concrete slabs, set on wide open lawns, embodied the architectural trend well. SLHA developed a series of projects using Title III: the John Cochran Gardens Apartments (1953), the Wendell O. Pruitt Apartments (1956), the William L. Igoe Homes (1956), the George L. Vaughn Homes (1958), the Joseph Darst Homes (1957) and the Anthony M. Webbe Homes (1961). Later Pruitt and Igoe became combined as Pruitt-Igoe, and Darst and Webbe became Darst-Webbe. The largest of these projects was the most infamous: the 57-acre Pruitt-Igoe project on the city’s north side, which had a total of 2,910 units in 33 11-story high-rises designed by Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber. All of the other projects were based on high-rise plans, favored by Mayor Joseph Darst although originally opposed by city planner Harland Bartholomew.11 The accelerated development in St. Louis not only fulfilled the 1947

3 Ibid.

4 Alexander Von Hoffman, “Why They Built Pruitt-Igoe,” From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban

Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (Pennsylvania State University Press. 2000), p.184. 5 Ibid.

6 Von Hoffman, p. 185.

7 Goetz, p. 121.

8 Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2008), p. 99. 9 Robert Beauregard, Voices of Decline (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 113.




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Comprehensive Plan’s recommendations, but also provided room for what Bartholomew anticipated would be major population growth in the city between 1950 and 1980.12 The city’s first project submitted to the Public Housing Administration was the 12-building John J. Cochran Garden Apartments (MO-1-3), located on five city blocks north of downtown (figure 4). The site engulfed the site of Neighborhood Gardens Apartments (1935; Hoener, Baum & Froese; NR 1997), the city’s earliest private mass housing project. SLHA hired the firm of Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber to design the new $9.2 million project. The Detroit-based firm had incorporated in 1949, and was helmed by native St. Louisan George Hellmuth, Minoru Yamasaki and Joseph Leinweber. Yamasaki was the lead designer while Hellmuth handled management. For Cochran Gardens, the firm designed stark brick buildings with dumbbell plans centered on double-loaded corridors set apart from each other on wide Corbusian lawns. Yet the project featured innovations that would not be seen subsequently: each unit had an exterior balcony, and the building forms were broken into four six-story, four seven-story and four twelve-story buildings. Cochran Gardens won the 1953 Gold Medal of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Institute of Architects as well as an Honorable Mention in the 1953 exhibition of the New York Architectural League.13 No other Housing Act-funded project would receive any architectural awards. Cochran Gardens was demolished between 2008 and 2012 under the HOPE VI program. Following Cochran Gardens, SLHA submitted plans for what would be its largest undertaking, the adjacent Pruitt and Igoe projects. Together, the two projects occupied a 57-acre superblock bounded by Carr, 20th, Cass and Jefferson avenues north of downtown, replacing a 25-block African-American slum in the DeSoto-Carr neighborhood. Pruitt-Igoe, as the site became known after SLHA combined the two developments, was the epitome of the Housing Act’s inversion of the public housing and slum housing clearance components. The 1947 city comprehensive plan recommended total clearance and reconstruction of the DeSoto-Carr neighborhood, and the Housing Act funds allowed both for fulfillment of the clearance and reconstruction through public housing. In 1949, SLHA presented the first plan for the Pruitt and Igoe projects: twelve 13-story buildings with 1,000 units.14 Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber were the architects. Public protest led the architects to rework the projects with 704 units distributed in six six-story, two seven-story and four twelve-story building.15 The Public Housing Administration (PHA) and SLHA continued to increase the size and density, however, assuming a demand based on relocation from other areas in the city’s slum clearance program.16 In 1951, Yamasaki presented a plan based on an 11-story tower form as well as 41 sets of two-story row houses; this plan would later be echoed in the plan for the Arthur Blumeyer Homes. SLHA scrapped the row houses when construction started in 1954. Thus, the Captain Wendell Oliver Pruitt Homes (MO-1-4) consisted of 20 11-story towers containing 1,736 units, while the William L. Igoe Apartments (MO-1-5) consisted of 13 11-story towers containing 1,134 units.17 The towers were set in rows divided by 200’ wide lawns, creating a monolithic site plan reminiscent of the famous model of Plan Voisin (figure 5).

12

Beauregard, p. 117. 13

Lynn Josse, Historical Information on St. Louis Public Housing Developments, 1939-1965 (St. Louis: Landmarks Association of St. Louis, 1999). Pages unnumbered. 14

Von Hoffman, p. 193. 15

Ibid. 16

Von Hoffman, p. 196-7. 17

Josse.


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Yamasaki’s final building design devised a 180’-wide slab tower unit (doubled for some buildings), clad in plain brick and devoid of embellishment. Yamasaki avoided double-loaded corridors in favor of a gallery plan that provided generous public hallways with south-facing window banks. At the 4th, 7th and 10th floors these galleries were elevator lobbies for the skip-stop elevators that avoided other floors. Perhaps the most innovative tendency in the Pruitt and Igoe towers’ design lay in Yamasaki’s concept of the “vertical neighborhood”: using the skip-stop elevators to widen circulation so that residents might interact with more of their neighbors. The towers otherwise were reduced to functional elements: bare concrete block walls, concrete floors, plain metal windows, small room sizes and even exposed services in some areas. PHA’s orders for cost efficiencies in construction still led to a $60 million construction cost for both projects. The Pruitt project opened in 1955, and the Igoe project opened in 1956. The capacity for 15,000 residents was never realized, with peak occupancy being around 12,000 in 1957 ahead of a permanent decline. Also, the St. Louis Housing Authority enforced racial segregation in its projects, and intended the Igoe homes (placed adjacent to white areas on the city’s north side) for whites and the Pruitt homes for African-Americans. However, the Igoe homes did not attract enough white residents for full occupancy, so SLHA then decided to mix occupancy.18 Yet the other projects remained segregated (Clinton-Peabody and Cochran for whites, Carr Square Village for blacks) even after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the United States Supreme Court mandated the end of segregation in public facilities. A successful lawsuit by tenants led to a St. Louis Circuit Court order to SLHA to desegregate public housing in December 1955. Subsequently, white population fell precipitously in all projects until it became almost non-existent. Pruitt-Igoe would be demolished between 1972 and 1977, after years of publicized decline following better early days (figure 6). By the day that the last tower fell, the projects had become symbols of utopian modernism to critics, with the dominant perspective summed up by architect and theorist Charles Jencks: “It was designed in a purist language at odds with the architectural codes of the inhabitants.”19 Yamasaki’s own perspective did not address the aesthetics of the projects, but echoes the scorn. Yamasaki wrote in 1972 that “I am perfectly willing to admit that of the buildings we have been involved with over the years, I hate this one the most. There are few others, but I don’t hate them; I just dislike them.”20 The backlash against modernist design for public housing ultimately culminated in the HOPE VI program that led to St. Louis’ demolition of all of its 1949 Housing Act towers. However, the modernist designs of the Turnkey-era towers indicate that SLHA did not place the blame for Pruitt-Igoe’s downfall on architectural modernism. While Pruitt and Igoe were under construction in 1954, the St. Louis Housing Authority submitted plans for the George L. Vaughn Homes (MO-1-6) immediately to the east across 20th Street (figure 5). Also designed by Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, the four nine-story Vaughn buildings were much different. The masses were broken into segments arranged in multi-wing groups with open vertical breezeways. Vaughn’s buildings were otherwise functionally modern, and served as the model for the later Darst project in south St. Louis. Completed in 1957, the 656-unit Vaughn project had an $8.7 million budget showing a much more economical construction rate than Pruitt-Igoe.21 Later, when SLHA elected to include elderly-only buildings

18

Quoted in Gordon, p. 99. 19

Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1977), p. 9. 20

Minoru Yamasaki, Letter to George Becht, 4 Dec. 1972. 21

Josse.


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at all projects, the Authority built an additional eight-story tower at Vaughn in 1963. Designed by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, the elderly tower was a rectangular, modernist building similar to the same type of building just built at the Webbe Apartments (1961). The entire Vaughn project was demolished between 1998 and 2006 under the HOPE VI program. The four nine-story towers of the Joseph M. Darst Apartments (MO-1-7) on 14th Street south of downtown essentially repeated the Vaughn design on a smaller site (figure 7). Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber designed the project, which included a relatively sophisticated (and largely unrealized) landscape program by noted landscape architect Emmett J. Layton. Plans date to 1954, the same year as Vaughn, and construction ended in 1957. The buff brick buildings cost around $9 million to build.22 Darst also had 656 units of housing. The influence of Corbusier’s “towers in a park” concept was evident at Darst: on a 14.11-acre site, the building footprints consumed only 1.7 acres, or 8.3 percent of the site.23 The remainder of the site was left for landscaped open space and automobile parking. SLHA followed this project with essentially an addition, the Anthony M. Webbe Apartments (MO-1-7A) completed in 1961 on the superblock to the north (figure 8). Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, local successor to Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber, designed the four-building group that included two nine-story towers similar to the Darst buildings, an eight-story elderly apartment building and a 12-story tower.24 Designs date to 1958. Late Darst and Webbe were merged into Darst-Webbe, following the convention set by Pruitt-Igoe. HOPE VI funds allowed the St. Louis Housing Authority to demolish Darst-Webbe in 1999. By the time that the sixth high-rise public Title III housing project rose in the city, the reality that modern design alone could not provide for the city’s poorest residents had already become apparent to social scientists. By 1960, SLHA’s resident population was nearly 100% African-American. Vacancy at Pruitt-Igoe stood at 9 percent in 1957, and 16 percent in 1960. While the Public Housing Administration provided SLHA with funds to build gleaming new towers, it provided inadequate funds for ongoing maintenance. The costs of the modern buildings outweighed revenues greatly: between 1948 and 1953, SLHA rent revenue rose 10 percent while operations costs rose 101 percent, and between 1954 and 1963 rents rose 50 percent while operations costs rose 300 percent.25 As vacancy rose, SLHA revenues fell, leading to a catastrophic ratio between operations costs and rental income. SLHA could find little sources of funding to cover the gap, which were not anticipated by the Housing Act. At Pruitt-Igoe specifically, a downward spiral of poor upkeep, resident abandonment, high crime and general unrest culminated in the nation’s first public housing rent strike in 1969. SLHA’s best efforts did little to change the decline. Meanwhile, St. Louis was losing population and total demand for housing in the city was falling, contradicting city planners’ predictions of huge gains. The last local project funded under Title III was a large project north of Midtown St. Louis named the Arthur Blumeyer Homes. Completed in 1966, the Blumeyer Homes was the first public housing project in St. Louis outside of areas adjacent to downtown.26 Blumeyer also was a

22

Ibid. 23

“Darst and Vaughn Mass Housing Projects to Be Dedicated This Afternoon,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 28 April 1957. 24

Ibid. 25

Eugene V. Meehan, Public Housing Policy: Convention Versus Reality (New Brunswick,N.J.: Center for Urban

Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1975), p. 71. 26

City Plan Commission, p. 19.


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departure from the architectural forms that SLHA had pursued before. Instead of rows of towers, Blumeyer’s 1,300 units were placed in two 15-story towers, three 14-story towers and 42 two-story buildings containing 288 row houses for families (figure 9). Architects Joseph Murphy and Eugene Mackey, soon to be renowned for their design of the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden, designed Blumeyer. While the tower forms were derivative of the rectangular, double-loaded corridor plans found earlier at Cochran, the townhouses were a new form for SLHA (figure 10). When Blumeyer was on the drawing boards, Pruitt-Igoe’s ailments occupied much of SLHA’s time. SLHA had first approached HUD for additional funds to improve Pruitt-Igoe in 1958, and finally received a large grant in 1965.27 By 1967, SLHA Acting Executive Director Thomas P. Costello would ask HUD for funds to start demolition of towers at Pruitt-Igoe. SLHA leaders envisioned Blumeyer as a project that would avoid the failure of Pruitt-Igoe, architecturally and socially. In 1966, SLHA Executive Director Claude Miller told reporters that he hoped that Blumeyer would attract “the type of low-income family that cherishes the same values that are found in families that have made it.”28 While eventually Blumeyer would be demolished through the HOPE VI program starting in 2006, its mix of low-rise townhouses and high-rise buildings would be a turning point for public housing architecture in St. Louis. SLHA’s subsequent use of the Turnkey program would follow Blumeyer’s lead. The St. Louis Housing Authority requested financial assistance for a number of projects in November of 1967, very soon after the Turnkey program was created at HUD. HUD informed SLHA that there was not much money at the moment except for projects that could provide occupancy by September 1968, but that they were sure more money would be allocated in July of 1968 and were confidant there would be funding for further Turnkey Projects to be built.29 The availability of Turnkey funds shifted SLHA’s housing development program to the new source of funding. Meanwhile, as clearance and public housing dollars dwindled, civic leaders in St. Louis and around the nation still fought to clear blighted neighborhoods. Yet large-scale projects were under attack by civil rights and housing rights advocates, preservationists and elected officials. Cities retreated from the planning that the 1949 Housing Act had enabled. As historian Robert Beauregard writes, by the late 1960s “urban renewal seemed less and less a panacea.”30 In St. Louis, the conditions of the Pruitt-Igoe project were documented again and again, showing the limitations of public housing as well as the consequences if overcrowding. SLHA responded to the changes in the era by pursuing scattered-site housing under the Turnkey program. High-Rise Residential Architecture in St. Louis, 1948-1969 By the time that St. Louis Housing Authority embarked upon the Turnkey tower developments, very few residential high-rises had risen in the city aside from public housing towers. In fact, most of the additional towers were developed through urban redevelopment corporations utilizing federal financial assistance, making them kindred in purpose to public housing developments. All of these towers’ architects embraced modernism in their design, but the stylistic traits are diverse. With the exception of several private projects located in the Central

27

Von Hoffman, p. 201. 28

“Stable Families to Be Sought For Blumeyer Homes,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 4 December 1966, p. 1A. 29

George M. Beauley, Letter to Irvin Dagen, 8 December 1967. 30

Beauregard, p. 161.


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West End and Forest Park, these towers all stand downtown or in the Mill Creek Valley urban renewal area. There are many similarities between the public housing high-rises examined in this study and contemporary private and subsidized non-SLHA housing towers built in the city. Multi-story, rectangular flat-roofed forms and concrete slab construction unite almost all high-rise residential construction in the city between 1948 and 1969. All residential towers relied on the vocabulary of the Modern Movement in American architecture, although formal expressions varied. Some private towers provided greater fenestration and more generous personal balconies, while others were remarkably similar to public housing towers. Interior layouts and ceiling heights were not greatly dissimilar across different types. The first postwar residential high-rise built in St. Louis was the Ford Apartments (1948; Preston J. Bradshaw; NR 2005) at 1405 Pine Street, built as part of the city’s efforts to renew the area around the earlier Memorial Plaza downtown (completed in 1938). Following the passage of the 1947 Comprehensive Plan, business leaders sought opportunities to rid downtown of “slums” and erect new mass housing projects. Before the enactment of the United States Housing Act, funding was limited to local mechanisms. Businessman James Ford led the city’s Anti-Slum Commission to press for a $16 million bond issue that allowed for construction of apartment towers around downtown.31 The only building realized by the issue was the 14-story, 104-unit building that would bear Ford’s name. The building’s minimal ornamentation, red brick rise, plain steel windows, low floor heights and economically-sized units presaged the public housing towers built after 1949 (figure 11). The next high-rise apartment building in the city was the Ambassador Apartments at 5340 Delmar Boulevard (1952), designed by Isadore Shank. The 12-story red-brick slab high rise featured cantilevered concrete balconies on its main elevation, making it somewhat similar in appearance to the Cochran towers. In the late 1960s, two larger downtown residential redevelopment projects were enabled by use of new public blighting and financing mechanisms. The first of these was the Plaza Square Apartments (1961; NR 2007), which was part of the ongoing effort to develop the western downtown areas adjacent to Memorial Plaza. In 1950, city leaders formed an Urban Redevelopment Corporation to acquire rights to redevelop four blocks west of 15th Street for middle-class housing.32 Initially architect Harris Armstrong was the architect, and he proposed two massive, long slab towers on the site. By 1958, the design charge passed to Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum.33 Gyo Obata reworked Armstrong’s plan into a Corbusian landscape of six 13-story slab towers set around historic churches and landscaped areas (figure 12). The towers were functionally similar to Cochran Gardens’ buildings: double-loaded corridors, low ceilings, plain finishes in the units and cantilevered balconies. However, Plaza Square’s facades were punctuated by colorful enamel panels devised by Alexander Girard, making each building visually distinct and playful as opposed to the somber monotone of the city’s public housing towers. The Mansion House Center (1967; Schwarz & Van Hoefen), located between Third and Fourth streets facing the new Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was enabled by a

31

Carolyn Hewes Toft, Stacy Sone and Matt Bivens, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Ford Apartments (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2005), p. 8-9. 32

Carolyn Hewes Toft and Michael Allen, National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Plaza Square Apartments

(Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2007), p. 8-18. 33

Toft and Allen, p. 8-31.


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redevelopment plan under Missouri’s Chapter 353 Urban Redevelopment Act.34 The city created the redevelopment plan in 1959, and in 1967 completed the complex of three 28-story residential towers, three low-rise office buildings and a long parking structure with rooftop sculpture garden. Schwarz & Van Hoefen’s concrete slab towers showed International style influences in glass lobbies, gridded curtain walls and thin cantilevered balconies. As with Plaza Square, city officials hoped that Mansion House would lure middle-class residents downtown, but high vacancy was a problem from the start.35 Starting in 1959, the City of St. Louis cleared 454 acres of the Mill Creek Valley area. The Mill Creek Urban Renewal Project used $7 million raised through a 1955 bond issue and $21 million in funds from the United States Housing Act authorization to clear the area and plan the new neighborhood.36 New high-rise residential towers were part of the master plan developed by Schwarz & Van Hoefen. The firm designed two apartment towers now named the Marchetti Towers (1964) near the intersection of Grand Avenue and Forest Park Boulevard that showed International style influences, with folded wall sections of glass and metal panels breaking up the otherwise plain slab forms. The 19-story Heritage House tower at 2800 Olive Street (1967; Pearce & Pearce) was an essay in contrasting brick tones and differentiated massing (figure 13). The largest Mill Creek towers were the two built as part of Council Plaza (1965-1969; NR 2009), a mixed-use project developed by the Teamsters Union Local 688 that included office and retail space and a gas station. Designed by Schwarz & Van Hoefen, the towers consist of a 16-story building built in 1964 and a 27-story building built in 1968 set perpendicular to each other on site (figure 14). The towers have similar articulation through a functionalist concrete grid, window ribbons and blind end walls adorned with sculptural elements. The Housing Act of 1959 authorized a federal loan program to develop elderly housing in cities known more widely for its title, Section 202. The Council Plaza project successfully obtained a loan from the Housing and Home Finance Agency under the Senior Citizens Housing Loan Program to build the towers.37 In the period that the public housing towers rose across the city, private developers built only a few high-rise apartment buildings that demonstrate no dominant preferred style. Two apartment towers were built on lots on Skinker Boulevard facing Forest Park’s western edge. The 17-story tower at 801 South Skinker (1961; Architectural Design Associates) demonstrates a design vocabulary borrowing from the International style with a passing reference to glass-skinned towers by architect Mies Van Der Rohe. The building’s concrete floor plates are articulated through segmental projections that divide banks of full-height windows. The base features a glass-walled lobby set behind tile-clad columns that are far too thick and cloaked to be true pilotis. The tower at 801 South Skinker featured custom-designed interiors and its units were always sold as condominiums.38 To the north, the 23-story Dorchester Apartments (1963; S.J. Kessler & Sons, Robert Elkington) at 665 S. Skinker Boulevard housed smaller rental units with fewer frills. Each unit has a balcony patio cantilevered from the body.39 The Dorchester Apartments’ monolithic brick cladding and balconies compares to the SLHA Housing Act projects. Two towers on the other

34

Gordon, p 163. 35

Gordon, p. 167. 36

Melinda Winchester, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Council Plaza (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2009), p. 8-19. 37

Winchester, p. 8-21. 38

George McCue, The Building Art in St. Louis: Two Centuries (St. Louis: Knight Publishing Company, 1981), p. 81. 39

Ibid.


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side of the park located on Kingshighway Boulevard from the 1950s, the Montclair and the Parc Frontenac, exhibit similar monolithic cladding but have more differentiated massing. Another private apartment tower is the Lindell Terrace (1963; Hellmuth Obata & Kassabaum) at 4501 Lindell Boulevard in the Central West End (figure 15). Lindell Terrace’s designer was Gyo Obata, who had served as project manager on the Pruitt and Igoe projects and whose firm designed the Darst and Webbe projects. The 15-story tower was a luxurious contrast to the firm’s public housing projects, although its modernist sensibilities were equally strong. Lindell Terrace sits upon a raised plaza, has a base of Texas marble and a body of buff brick, and has recessed integral balcony porches at each corner. Lindell Terrace presents an austere formality befitting its prominent location on a major street. The tower was part of a larger effort to reconstruct Lindell Boulevard in the postwar era that produced many Modern Movement buildings between Grand and Kingshighway.40 On the block east of Lindell Terrace, two additional private high-rise apartment buidlings rose in the 1960s. The 12-story Jackson Arms at 4482 Lindell (1964; Sommerich & Woods) is a concrete slab-floored building with a prominent circulation tower and entrance facing the street, but a simple brick body with a grid of windows on its secondary elevations. More prominently sited is the 21-story Towne House at 4400 Lindell (1965; A.K. Salkowitz), which occupies the southwest corner of Lindell and Newstead avenues facing the Cathedral Basillica. Towne House compares to the Dorchester Apartments in its plain brick rise and its prominent balconies, but its base features a patterned concrete block screen and a cantilevered thin-shell concrete canopy following the curve of its entrance drive (figure 16). HUD Creates the “Turnkey” Program, 1966 During the age of housing projects developed under Title III of the United States Housing Act, alternatives were tried in some cities. Philadelphia developed a “Used House” program in which the Public Housing Administration financed the rehabilitation or construction of over 5,000 units of scattered row-houses in distressed neighborhoods.41 Philadelphia’s program utilized federal financing for private developers that ultimately sold their completed projects to the local housing authority. The Philadelphia program provided a key precedent for the new Turnkey program initiated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1966. President Lyndon Johnson appointed Robert C. Weaver Secretary of HUD on January 18, 1966. Two days later, Weaver announced an experimental public housing program called “Turnkey.”42 Turnkey public housing projects marked a shift in the way that HUD handled low-income housing problems throughout the United States. Under the Turnkey program, the local housing authorities would contract for development of new units with private developers. Developers of public housing would produce the units on their own land, with payment coming through sale of completed units to the local housing authority.43 The name “turnkey” came from the idea that a completed building would be ready for occupancy immediately upon sale to a local housing authority.

40

Karen Bode Baxter, Tim Maloney and Michael Allen, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Bel-Air Motel (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2009), p. 8-22. 41

Joseph Burstein, “New Techniques in Public Housing,” Law and Contemporary Problems 32 (Summer 1967), p. 529. 42

Ibid. 43

Burstein, p. 530.


13

In 1967, legal scholar Joseph Burstein wrote that, “Although simple in concept, the Turnkey system completely reverses the traditional method of producing public housing…”44 Local housing authorities using Turnkey would not have to handle site acquisition (or clearance working with local land clearance authorities), architect selection or competitive bidding and award – all activities that increased administrative costs for authorities like SLHA. HUD embraced private development entities that had experience in creating building projects based on profit structures that could prove more efficient, resulting in savings in public housing development.45 Developers could submit proposals for project the local housing authority was looking to build, and the authority would select which proposal suited it best. The authority issued a letter of intent to purchase the finished project, and the authority would agree to buy the finished product if the developer fulfilled the terms. The burden for completion rested with the developer, who would have to fully finish a building before realizing any profit. HUD authorized the first amendment to the program in August 1967, when President Johnson announced Turnkey II. Turnkey II was a pilot program that allowed local housing authorities to hire private managerial staff to manage public housing buildings purchased under the original Turnkey (now Turnkey I) program.46 Again, HUD emphasized the efficiency of privatization and the goal of reducing operating costs of public housing on local authorities. Many, like SLHA, were straining to manage the United States Housing Act-funded projects for which Turnkey II could not legally be used. HUD authorized Turnkey III in September of 1967 to create private ownership for low-income families.47 Under Turnkey III, families could provide a combination of sweat equity and income sufficient to cover basic maintenance costs to purchase their units. Turnkey III projects still were privately developed, bought by the local housing authority and then leased to tenants with an option to purchase.48 The genesis of Turnkey III idea was a housing plan implemented on Indian Reservations in 1962.49 Turnkey III intended to have the effect of creating pride in ones home and an emotional as well as financial ownership of that home. Turnkey Public Housing Underway in St. Louis SLHA’s Acting Executive Director Thomas P. Costello sought to utilize the Turnkey program to continue developing public housing in St. Louis. Upon SLHA’s request, the Board of Aldermen authorized SLHA’s application for 3,000 units of Turnkey housing.50 Costello would later state in a speech that the Turnkey program would help address the “stigma” of earlier failures. “We think that these Turnkey projects very definitely prove that all public housing is not Pruitt-Igoe,” stated Costello in 1971. Costello’s tone matches the intent of Weaver and Turnkey framers: to shift public housing away from concentrated tower projects and into scattered sites seen to be easier to manage with more benefit to tenants. SLHA’s Turnkey efforts were modest compared to its aggressive and nationally-recognized use of the United States Housing Act funds. In 1970, developers started building 526 Turnkey

44

Burstein, p. 530. 45

Ibid. 46



Ibid. 49


Thomas P. Costello, “Public Housing Consultation: Remarks Concerning Turnkey Proposals,” speech delivered 23

September 1971.


14

projects around the United States, inclusive of 48,400 housing units.51 St. Louis started 192 units, most of which were in the towers studied for this project. In comparison, East St. Louis started construction of 768 units, Kansas City started 200 units and Indianapolis started 206.52 Costello wanted greater growth, and blamed the City Plan Commission’s housing policies for slowing the construction of Turnkey projects. A City Plan Commission study from 1970 estimated that the city had a deficiency of 17,000 low-rent dwelling units.53 Yet SLHA observed that the City Plan Commission’s own program would only lead to building 900 units per year, of which only 400 would be Turnkey units.54 SLHA challenged the City Plan Commission housing development program, in 1972 noting that the program would never match demand for public housing. Federal Housing Administration estimates showed that from July 1970 and July 1972, St. Louis had a Turnkey occupancy potential of 3,730 units (1,200 for elderly in towers).55 SLHA developed fewer than 1,800 Turnkey units in that period. SLHA was in communication with St. Louis Civic Alliance for Housing about projects under way in STL and the hesitance to start new projects before finishing the ones already in progress. SLHA felt this public stance was making private developers nervous that St. Louis would not build as many Turnkey housing units because of it. Yet Mayor Alfonso Cervantes’ administration tried to assuage the Alliance by taking a conservative stance on further Turnkey development, which Cervantes though should happen only after existing projects under construction were built and occupied.56 The reality of St. Louis’ housing conditions seemed to suggest, however, that Costello’s view of Turnkey housing production was correct. According to HUD, St. Louis’ housing problems were among the nation’s worst in 1972. Assistant Secretary Norman Watson told the Wall Street Journal that “[t]he inner city of St. Louis is the furthest along (of all major US cities) on the scale of economic decline.”57 HUD rated 29% (70,1000 units) of the city’s housing stock as “poor” and 40% (84,400 units) as only “fair.”58 Turnkey Towers in St. Louis, 1968-1972 The towers built under the Turnkey program today remain as the last public housing towers in St. Louis, and thus have potentially significant historic and architectural associations. Whether these towers are exceptionally significant to warrant National Register of Historic Places designation before turning 50 years old is uncertain, and requires individual property evaluations. However categorically the social history of the Turnkey towers suggests local significance based on association with SLHA’s effort to reinvent public housing in the wake of management failures at Pruitt-Igoe and other earlier high-rise developments. By March of 1972, nine Turnkey towers had been completed. These buildings included 827 housing units. Additionally, four buildings with 740 units were under construction and four more

51

Construction Reports: Housing Starts (Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 1971), p. 19. 52

Construction Reports: Housing Starts, p. 20. 53

St. Louis Housing Authority, Housing Plan (1972), p. 9. 54

Ibid. 55

Ibid. 56

Alphonso J. Cervantes, Letter to Arthur Klein, 12 September 1970. 57

Monroe W. Karmin, “St. Louis: Can the Decay Be Stopped?”, Wall Street Journal, 2 March 1972. 58

Ibid.


15

buildings with 207 units were in various stages of planning or negotiations.59 The five projects included in this study were built between the years of 1969 and 1972. SLHA policy placed elderly residents in high-rise projects and families in low-rise, multi-bedroom townhouse or apartment units. This strategy followed the implementation of a similar plan at the Blumeyer Homes, although only one project (Euclid Plaza) actually combined the two types of housing on one site. Generally, the Turnkey program shows the separation of elderly and family housing across the city. The placement of public housing towers in the Turnkey era different sharply from the policy pursued by SLHA previously. Earlier developments all were built in area identified by the City Plan Commission as having poor quality housing, making the public housing a utopian replacement. The five Turnkey towers built between 1967 and 1972 demonstrated avoidance of matching these new buildings with areas whose housing had been identified as the city’s worst. Two (Parkview and West Pine) were built in areas ranked as having “good” housing, one (St. James) was built where housing was “fair – below average”, one (Euclid Plaza) was built where housing was “fair – above average” and only one (Kingsbury Terrace) was built where housing was rated as “poor.”60 None was built inside of any official redevelopment area, and all were far outside of the city’s core where urban renewal clearance efforts were still underway. Architecturally, the five towers built in these years were not greatly significant. The previous wave of high-rise public housing towers in St. Louis represented the work significant architects including Minoru Yamasaki and Joseph Murphy, and demonstrated national attention through publication of designs in Architectural Record and other publications. The Turnkey projects were developed by private builders who did not have the larger public budgets of the Public Housing Administration, so the cost savings shown by using less well-known designers is not remarkable. None of the Turnkey towers appeared in national publications, and none is included in George McCue’s The Building Art in St. Louis, whose 1981 edition was a capstone to the modern era. Among the designers, Peckham & Guyton and Schwarz & Van Hoefen were prominent designers whose work was widely-published. Peckham & Guyton’s design for Euclid Plaza is the most distinct of the group, and represents the use of the Brutalist style, which was not widely adopted for residential architecture in St. Louis. Despite lack of stylistic coherence and overall architectural importance, however, the slab towers from this period do represent SLHA’s continuation of preference toward Modern Movement design for new projects. The first Turnkey project that the St. Louis Housing Authority completed was Euclid Plaza (or Turnkey Project MO 1-13) located at 5300 North Euclid Ave (figures 18-21). It was developed by the Urban Improvement Corporation, and included 82 townhouses, one right-story high-rise building with 140 apartments, and one community building.61 The St. Louis Housing Authority purchased Euclid Plaza in July of 1970 for $4,205,386.62 Euclid Plaza was designed by the best-known architects to work on a Turnkey project, the relatively young local firm of Peckham & Guyton. At Euclid Plaza, the high-rise apartments were designed as housing for the elderly. The building’s upper stories have small apartments, while the first floor provides offices for the

59

League of Women Voters, Turnkey Housing (March 1972). 60

City Plan Commission, p. 36. 61

Euclid Plaza (St. Louis Housing Authority, 1969). 62

League of Women Voters.


16

management staff, community space, including and arts & crafts room, a large multi-purpose room, conference rooms, bathrooms and a lounge.63 The 3 or 4 bedroom, family townhouses were set off of Euclid, behind the high-rise. By January of 1972, Euclid Plaza was 100% occupied. In February of 1972, a progress report given to Mr. Costello explained that the care of the Euclid Plaza complex was in the hands of the Laclede Town Group, who had hired a “Maintenance Man” to live in the high rise and make sure all of the pumps, boilers and other general mechanics were functioning.64

St. James A.M.E. Church (or St. James Chapel), a historically African-American church in The Ville, developed and later managed the James House (or Turnkey Project MO1-10), located at Pendleton and St. Ferdinand avenues (figures 22-25). The completed building, designed by noted local firm Schwarz & Van Hoefen, was ten stories tall and contained 99 efficiency units, 55 one bedroom units and 1 two bedroom unit. Like the Euclid Plaza high-rise, James House always was intended as housing for senior citizens. Amenities in this building include outdoor recreation area, community rooms, arts and crafts room, kitchen, laundry and senior safety features. It was completed in December of 1970 and cost $2,620,065.65

The large construction project of the James House was awarded to Reliance Construction Co. who would later be charged with discriminatory hiring practices and spur a change in the SLHA regulations for future developers contracted to build Turnkey Projects. Reliance was not found to be in violation of federal regulations in place at the time, but it did bring up the serious need for an increase in equal economic opportunity in areas suffering from abandonment of people and industry, areas that needed this housing.

The Civic Alliance for Housing and the SLHA set up public forums to reach an agreement on how to increase the number of African Americans employed in the construction of these projects. They hoped for a partnership between whites and blacks, to help foster sharing of knowledge, experience and resources.66 SLHA decided that “contractors must show how they will involve Negroes in building public housing projects before contracts are awarded.”67 The first contractors to propose a development following these racial guidelines was Creative Communities Inc. They proposed that African Americans will receive “at least thirty percent of the general contract jobs,” “a minimum of thirty percent of the subcontracting,” the general contractor would have to sign the St. Louis Plan which “sets aside training slots for Negroes on construction work,” and finally materials would be required to be purchased from businesses that “observe equal employment regulations.”68 This project was approved and came to be known as the West Pine (or Turnkey Project MO1-17). It was completed in November of 1971, cost $2,135,300 and is comprised of 128 senior citizen apartments in a ten story building on the corner of Taylor and West Pine. The first floor is a community area that includes a multipurpose room, arts and crafts room, kitchen space, library, and managerial offices.69 While the West Pine Apartments were underway, Kingsbury Terrace (Turnkey project MO1-18) had opened at 5655 Kingsbury Avenue in March 1971 (figures 26-30). Designed by Philadelphia architect Stanford G. Brooks, the building was an eleven story apartment building for the elderly,

63

Euclid Plaza. 64

“Progress Report, Private Management of Turnkey Housing,” Inter-Office Communication, St. Louis Housing Authority, 15 February 1972. 65

James House. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1969. 66

E.S. Evans, “Turnkey Job Plan for Blacks, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 April 1970, p. 3A. 67

“Authority to Require Negro Contractor Role,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 22 April 1970. 68

“Negro Share in Project Spelled Out,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 6 May 1970, p. 4A. 69

West Pine (St. Louis Housing Authority, 1970).


17

divided into 87 efficiency units and 60 one bedroom units.70 Amenities include an outdoor recreation area, community rooms, common kitchen, arts and crafts room, conference room, laundry, managerial offices and senior safety features. SLHA hired the Lipton Company to take over the management of the complex. A February 1972 SLHA memorandum stated that Bethesda Temple was providing programs such as arts and crafts, a drama club and medical services for residents and that Lipton Group’s performance was satisfactory. General success of private management and community involvement was apparent in at least at the early stages of this housing complex.71 Parkview Apartments (Turnkey Project MO1-19) sits at 4451 Forest Park Avenue and is a thirteen story building providing housing for the elderly that was finished in December of 1972 (figures 31-35). Apartments are divided into 299 efficiency units, 96 one bedroom units and 2 two bedroom units and community amenities include a patio, laundry room, community rooms, offices and a kitchen. Two two-bedroom apartments served as residence for the manager and the maintenance employee.72 The slab building had the most distinct plan of any SLHA high-rise, with a center service column flanked by angled outward-projecting wings. The final tower completed under the Turnkey program was Warwood (Turnkey Project MO 1-24), an eight-story building built by developer James E. Hurt, Jr. as part of a project that also included 29 townhouse units.73 The Warwood tower provided 95 units of elderly housing divided into 64 efficiencies and 31 1-bedroom units. The building included a community room, laundry, an arts and crafts room and other amenities. Warwood was programmatically similar to Euclid Plaza, with units on a double-loaded corridor and an exterior expressed through a concrete grid (figure 17). The St. Louis Housing Authority first included Warwood on its Turnkey production reports in 1971, but the building was not completed and purchased until 1973. The St. Louis Housing Authority no longer owns Warwood, but retains the other five Turnkey towers. The St. Louis Housing Authority and Turnkey Projects After 1974

In 1972, the SLHA Housing Plan reported that $119.6 million had been spent on building Turnkey housing, with an additional $18 million in projects under construction.74 Over half of the city’s new housing between 1969 and 1972 (51.5%) came from SLHA Turnkey projects.75 According to SLHA, each unit of Turnkey housing had generated $17,000 in new construction jobs, job training and material purchases. According to SLHA, 29% of renters and 18% of all households had an after-tax income of less than $5,000, qualifying for public housing. Additionally, half of the city’s elderly population qualified for public housing.76 Yet the Turnkey program had begun facing local complaints in 1972. Given high demand for units, SLHA implemented an intensive and competitive interview process for potential tenants. Some critics accused SLHA as trying to a halting of low-income citizens being placed in public housing completely.77 The requirement that Turnkey developments be mixed income, severely restricted the number families on welfare being accepted into these buildings. SLHA used this

70

Kingsbury (St. Louis Housing Authority, 1969). 71

“Progress Report, Private Management of Turnkey Housing.” 72

Parkview (St. Louis Housing Authority, 1971). 73

Warwood (St. Louis Housing Authority, 1971). 74

St. Louis Housing Authority, p. 5-6. 75

St. Louis Housing Authority, p. 6. 76


Sally Thran, “St. Louis Problem: Where Shall Poorest Of Poor Live?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 January 1972, p. 20A.


18

mixed-income model to help prevent problems seen in areas where large numbers of the very poor are concentrated, but with this policy came a very large lack of housing stock available to members of the city living on welfare. SLHA did often deny occupancy in Turnkey projects to families who survived solely on their welfare income.78 Unit size was another common complaint from residents. Many of the families in need of housing needed between three and six bedrooms to accommodate the size of their families, yet most of the developed housing units were only one to four room apartments, so the number of large families living in dwellings in which they didn’t fit was quite substantial. Still other families were evicted, were never accepted into the program or were denied by managers because there were too many people to occupy the apartments available. Costello maintained that the SLHA could not be responsible for solving all of the city’s problems and stated that they were doing the best they could in trying to create a decent solution to a many layered problem.79 SLHA Director Costello struck a cautious tone in a letter to United States Representative Leonor K. Sullivan sent in January 1972. Costello wrote that the SLHA had entered into contracts with a number of private companies that have been successful at managing past Turnkey Projects because the authority did not have enough resources to run them in a way that would keep them from falling into disrepair and failing like some of the earlier housing projects.80 Costello maintained that SLHA was optimistic that Turnkey projects would also residents and community members to be more a part of the conversation and could create more ownership. According to the letter, more than four thousand people applied for residence in the new Turnkey projects and therefore spurred a tighter screening process that included interviews. This new screening process was also transferred to filtering applications for older, more traditional low-income housing, but the SLHA found the demand for these places was not high because of their dismal physical condition. Mr. Costello wrote that the Authority recognizes the need to “make all public housing a decent livable environment for all low-income citizens.”81 Although not always avoiding criticism, SLHA was able to use the Turnkey program as the opportunity to attempt new management techniques. Costello and housing manager T.J. Walsh pursued private management contracts for all projects. Walsh wrote to Costello in March 1972 stating that “We see turnkey [sic] in a transition stage, i.e., from our direct management to private management.”82 Walsh noted that some of the new contracts were too new to evaluate, but suggested that success was likely. Walsh states that private management would eliminate the need for SLHA to have large administrative and maintenance staffs.83 Reduction of operating expenses, Walsh and Costello would come to agree, could avoid the issues that clouded projects like Pruitt-Igoe that chronically suffered from the need for SLHA to carry high overhead. City officials outside SLHA observed the Turnkey program as a positive change in public housing. The City Plan Commission’s interim comprehensive plan Saint Louis Development Program, published in 1975, gave the Turnkey towers received high marks. The report states

78

Ibid. 79

Ibid. 80

Thomas P. Costello, Letter to the Honorable Leonor K. Sullivan, 25 January 1972. 81

Ibid. 82

“Employee Evaluation Reports and Analysis of Turnkey Operation,” SLHA Inter-Office Communication, 16 March 1972. 83

Ibid.


19

that projects consisting of only high-rise buildings were “acknowledged disasters.”84 The City Plan Commission praised Blumeyer and Turnkey projects for advancing a successful alternative: “In contrast, low-rise family projects and high-rise developments exclusively for elderly tenants have met with a marked degree of success.”85 Yet the City Plan Commission never adopted SLHA’s proposal to annually produce 2,200 new housing units through the Turnkey program, which could have accounted for 60% of new occupancy potential citywide.86

By 1974, SLHA had completed six high-rise or “tower” buildings along with low-rise projects for families at Hamilton-Julian, Taylor and McMillan and on Cabanne Avenue and low-rise elderly projects on Lafayette and California avenues.87 The geographic dispersal of these projects corresponded to social needs as well as ongoing SLHA interest in avoiding concentrations of projects. SLHA continued to press for Turnkey development, citing the results of early construction and ongoing demand, but changes in HUD policy caused the Turnkey program to sunset after 1974.

Congress already had passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1970, which created the Federal Experimental Housing Allowance Program to authorize more funds for moderate-income household rent supplements. Finally, the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 amended the United States Housing Act of 1937 to create the Section 8 program. Under the Section 8 program, tenants would pay 30 percent of their income for rental of housing, while HUD supplied the rest of the rent through local housing authorities. There were no restrictions on ownership of rented units, and Section 8 led to many families moving out of publicly-owned or managed housing. Section 8 effectively replaced the Turnkey development program. Meanwhile, in 1977 SLHA demolished the last tower at the notorious Pruitt-Igoe project, after starting demolition the prior year.

Despite economic strength between the 1973-1975 and 1981-2 recessions, the federal government did not greatly increase social welfare spending.88 The Nixon and Carter administrations emphasized returning federal spending to local governments and continued privatization of urban renewal efforts. The Turnkey program, which represented an earlier attempt at privatization, did remain viable at HUD since it fit federal priorities. However, HUD made no new sources of operating funding available to SLHA or local authorities in America’s cities. St. Louis led the nation’s cities in population loss through the 1970s, with even its poor moving out from the city.89 Yet demand for SLHA units remained strong after the Turnkey towers were built.

In 1992, Congress authorized the HOPE (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI program. HOPE VI funding for housing project upgrades is predicated on official standards that have found most high-rise buildings unsuitable for continued occupancy. SLHA has used HOPE VI funds to demolish all of its pre-Turnkey housing towers save one remaining tower at the Blumeyer Homes slated for demolition. Upon the last Blumeyer tower’s demolition, the five SLHA-owned Turnkey towers will be the only remaining high-rise public housing buildings in St. Louis.

84

City Plan Commission, p. 19. 85

Ibid. 86


League of Women Voters. 88

Beauregard, p. 183. 89

Beauregard, p. 197.


20

4. Bibliography

“Authority to Require Negro Contractor Role,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 22 April 1970. Baxter, Karen Bode, Tim Maloney and Michael Allen, National Register of Historic Places

Nomination Form: Bel-Air Motel. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2009. Beauley, George M. Letter to Irvin Dagen, 8 December 1967. Beauregard, Robert. Voices of Decline. New York: Routledge, 2003. Burstein, Joseph. “New Techniques in Public Housing.” Law and Contemporary Problems 32

(Summer 1967). Cervantes, Alphonso J. Letter to Arthur Klein, 12 September 1970. City Plan Commission. Saint Louis Development Program. 1973. Construction Reports: Housing Starts. Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 1971. Costello, Thomas P. “Public Housing Consultation: Remarks Concerning Turnkey Proposals.”

Speech delivered 23 September 1971. ---. Letter to the Honorable Leonor K. Sullivan, 25 January 1972. “Darst and Vaughn Mass Housing Projects to Be Dedicated This Afternoon.” St. Louis Post-

Dispatch, 28 April 1957. Evans, E.S. “Turnkey Job Plan for Blacks, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 April 1970. Euclid Plaza. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1969. Goetz, Edward G. New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice & Public Housing Policy. Ithaca,

N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013. Gordon, Colin. Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City. Philadelphia:

University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. The James House. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1970. Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. New York: Rizzoli International

Publications, 1977. Josse, Lynn. Historical Information on St. Louis Public Housing Developments, 1939-1965. St.

Louis: Landmarks Association of St. Louis, 1999. Karmin, Monroe W. “St. Louis: Can the Decay Be Stopped?” Wall Street Journal, 2 March 1972. Kingsbury Terrace. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1969.


21

League of Women Voters, Turnkey Housing. March 1972. McCue, George. The Building Art in St. Louis: Two Centuries. St. Louis: Knight Publishing

Company, 1981. Meehan, Eugene V. Public Housing Policy: Convention Versus Reality. New Brunswick,N.J.:

Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, 1975. “Negro Share in Project Spelled Out,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 6 May 1970. Parkview. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1971. Progress Report, Private Management of Turnkey Housing, Inter-Office Communication, St.

Louis Housing Authority, 15 February 1972. St. Louis Housing Authority. Housing Plan. 1972. “Stable Families to Be Sought For Blumeyer Homes,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 4 December

1966. Thran, Sally. “St. Louis Problem: Where Shall Poorest Of Poor Live?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

19 January 1972. Toft, Carolyn Hewes and Michael Allen. National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Plaza

Square Apartments. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2007. Toft, Carolyn Hewes, Stacy Sone and Matt Bivens. National Register of Historic Places

Nomination Form: Ford Apartments. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2005. Von Hoffman, Alexander. “Why They Built Pruitt-Igoe.” Bauman, John F., Roger Biles, and

Kristin M. Szylvian, eds. From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America. Pennsylvania State University Press. 2000.

Warwood. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1971. West Pine. St. Louis Housing Authority, 1970. Winchester, Melinda. National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: Council Plaza.

Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2009. Yamasaki, Minoru. Letter to George Becht, 4 December 1972. Collection of Wayne State

University.


22

4. Figures

Figure 1: Le Corbusier’s model of Plan Voisin (1925). Source: Museum of Modern Art.


23

Figure 2: Clinton-Peabody Terrace after completion in 1942 Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis.


24

Figure 3: Several St. Louis Housing Authority developments and other high-rise residential developments are included in this 1960 aerial view of the city that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Blumeyer Homes (24), Mill Creek Valley (19), the Darst and Webbe projects (17), Pruitt-Igoe (25) and Mansion House Center (8) appear. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis.


25

Figure 4: Cochran Gardens Apartments upon completion depicted in the Stephen Gorman Bricklaying Company’s 1956 portfolio. Source: St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.


26

Figure 5: A 1959 United States Geological Survey photograph shows the Pruitt and Igoe projects (left) and the George L. Vaughn Apartments (right). Source: State Historical Society of Missouri.


27

Figure 6: Life at Pruitt-Igoe, c. 1965. Source: State Historical Society of Missouri.


28

Figure 7: One of the towers at the Joseph M. Darst Homes in 1959. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


29

Figure 8: Construction of the Anthony M. Webbe Homes, 1960. Source: St. Louis Globe-Democrat.


30

Figure 9: Site plan for the Arthur Blumeyer Apartments. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


31

Figure 10: One of the towers at the Arthur Blumeyer Apartments. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


32

Figure 11: The Ford Apartments in 2005. Source: Landmarks Association of St. Louis.


33

Figure 12: Rendering of the Plaza Square Apartments. Source: St. Louis Public Library.


34

Figure 13: The Heritage House tower in the Mill Creek Valley redevelopment area, 2011. Source: Preservation Research Office.


35

Figure 14: The two residential towers at Council Plaza in 2009. Source: Preservation Research Office.


36

Figure 15: Lindell Terrace in 2009. Source: Preservation Research Office.


37

Figure 16: Towne House Apartments in 2009. Source: Preservation Research Office.


38

Figure 17: The Warwood tower as it appears today. Source: Preservation Research Office.


39

5. Appendix: Survey of Turnkey Public Housing Towers Summary The preparers studied five public housing towers located in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, all of which are owned by the St. Louis Housing Authority and were built during the federal “Turnkey I” period of public housing development. The five public housing towers included in this study were all built between 1969 and 1972, a period of time that witnessed the decline of Modernism and the emergence of reactionary architectural styles. Within the field of housing design specifically, these years were fundamental in shaping a new vision of public housing; by the early 1970s Pruitt-Igoe, whose architecture was popularly characterized as a primary cause for massive failure, was undergoing selective demolition. Therefore, it is logical that the Turnkey apartment buildings demonstrate a dramatic stylistic and materialistic separation from the previous decades’ designs. Each of the Turnkey apartments is a single ten- to thirteen-story apartment building with a first-floor veranda or setback to provide a semi protected space around the base of the building. There are large windows on the first floor to enhance the sense of public, shared space at the ground level. The similarity of the ground-floor levels of each building is continued on upper floors only in that each is articulated by window bays. In James House and Kingsbury terrace vertical divisions are strongly emphasized by thick concrete piers, whereas the windows in each bay are separated by strong horizontal slabs on the elevations at Euclid Plaza. Both Parkview and West Pine do not have strong divisions in either direction, giving their elevations a balanced vertical and horizontal patterning. Despite these variations in style, on each building there are principal elevations and secondary elevations. The apartment unit windows are on the principal elevations, whereas the secondary elevations are the narrow ends of the building enclosing either elevator or stairwells. In addition to the semi-open first floor, the organization of principal and secondary elevations unifies these five buildings and reveals their cohesion as an architectural group despite differing designers. The use of exposed concrete in the Turnkey apartments marks a rejection of the material and formal purity of modernism in favor of the emerging Brutalist style. The West Pine building is made entirely of reinforced concrete, and although most of the James House, Kingsbury Terrace, Parkview, and Euclid Plaza apartments are clad in red brick, there are parts of each building that do not hide its construction. Euclid Plaza in particular reveals elements of Brutalist architecture being popularized elsewhere and in the coming years. Its deep concrete balconies and dramatic horizontal concrete slabs give the building the characteristic oversized angular appearance of Brutalism. The double-height concrete balconies on the West Pine north elevation resemble those at Euclid Plaza. Even though the elevations of the James House, Parkview, and Kingsbury Terrace are predominately brick-clad, concrete piers and slabs interrupt the brick and expose the structural composition of each building.


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Euclid Plaza Apartments (MO1-13) Location: 5310 N. Euclid Avenue

Date of Construction: 1970 Architects: Peckham & Guyton Description This building is an eight-story dark red brick and concrete building with a rectangular floor plan. There are 84 efficiency, 56 one-bedroom, 33 three-bedroom, and 85 four-bedroom units for a total of 266 units. The primary entry is at the center of the west façade facing N. Euclid Ave. Twelve rectangular concrete columns extend vertically between every two floors and three wide concrete slabs divide the façade into four horizontal segments. The first level is an open-air veranda around the entire exterior with brick cladding and windows inset from the façade. The second level is composed of one continuous line of windows with concrete spandrel panels below instead of a structural slab. Floors 3, 5 and 7 are continuous rows of windows with concrete slabs below. Floors 4, 6, and 8 have full-floor windows at the edges of each bay with brick cladding between. All the windows on the facades are inset from the elevation. Above the entryway is a bay of deep two-story balconies with double-height glass and a single central door behind. The east elevation is similar to the west. Due to the slope of the site, on this facade there is a lower service level made of brick below the first floor open-air veranda. The second floor is a continuous line of windows with concrete spandrels panels below. Floors 3, 5 and 7 have full-floor windows at the edges of each bay with brick cladding between. Floors 4 and 6 are continuous rows of windows with concrete slabs below. The upper most level is a single continuous line of windows with a balcony in the center bay and a horizontal slab underneath. Instead of extending between every two floors, the lowest level of columns extends to support the first four floors. The floors in the center bay alternate between deep balconies and windows with concrete panels below. The identical north and south facades are smooth reinforced concrete surfaces with a central solid brick stair access that extends above the roofline of the concrete and is divides the two verandas on the first level. History Urban Improvement Corporation built Euclid Plaza in the Mark Twain neighborhood for SLHA. The city issued the building permit for Euclid Plaza on February 24, 1969, and construction costs were reported as $1,750,000. H.B. Deal Company was the contractor and Peckham/Guyton Associates were the architects. The completed building embodied the “Brutalist” strain in modern architecture, which emphasized geometric roughness and made use of concrete as an exterior material. SLHA developed Euclid Plaza as part of a three-phase Turnkey project that included 82 two-story masonry townhouses located south of the tower on three courts (Theodore, Thekla and Vera) intersecting with Vera Avenue. The townhouses opened in Fall 1970, but were demolished after 2000. Peckham/Guyton Associates started as the partnership of architects William Peckham and Fred Guyton in 1965. The firm became Peckham, Guyton, Albers & Viets and later simply PGAV. Today, PGAV is a major architectural firm headquartered in St. Louis with a Kansas City branch office. Little scholarlship exists on the firm’s significance, but its output has been prolific. George


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McCue selected two Peckham, Guyton, Alberts & Viets projects for inclusion in the 1981 edition of The Building Art in St. Louis: Big Cat Country at the St. Louis Zoo (1976) and the Anheuser-Busch Company Office Building (also 1976).90 William Peckham is mentioned in the same volume for his contribution to the restoration of the Robert Campbell Home (1851) in downtown St. Louis. The architectural design of Euclid Plaza recalls the design of the influential Le Corbusier design of Cité radieuse (1947-1952) in Marseilles, France. There, Corbusier articulated a reinforced concrete slab housing tower through a pronounced rough concrete exterior grid. The building’s first floor is recessed behind pilotis that provide structural support. Corrisors run on the building axis, and some units have balconies. The Marseilles project was Corbusier’s first realization of his program called “Unité d'Habitation.” The other Unités were built in Nantes-Rezé called Unité d'Habitation of Nantes-Rezé in 1955, Berlin-Westend in 1957, Briey in 1963, and Firminy in 1965. Euclid Plaza’s gridded rough concrete wall and general elongated form follow the Corbusier designs, while some elements, like the dark brick, are more closely related to local building customs.

Figure 18: Euclid Plaza, view looking southwest toward rear elevation. June 2013.

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McCue, p. 80 and p. 89.


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Figure 19: Euclid Plaza, view looking northeast toward primary elevation. June 2013.

Figure 20: Euclid Plaza, Detail of entrance. June 2013.


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Figure 21: Site plan for Euclid Plaza showing the original townhouse development to the south. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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James House Apartments (MO1-10)

Location: 4310 St. Ferdinand Date of Construction: 1969 Architects: Schwarz & Van Hoefen

Description This building is a ten-story red brick and concrete apartment building with a rectangular footprint and a strong vertical orientation. There are a total of 155 apartment units in the building: 99 efficiency, 55 one-bedroom, and one two-bedroom. The building sits on a concrete slab base and is composed of nine symmetrical bays articulated by vertical concrete piers which protrude slightly from the brick elevation. On the first floor of both the north and south elevations the two easternmost and two westernmost bays are open-air, while the center five bays are enclosed with glass. The main entrance is located in the third bay from the west (right) when looking at the north façade and is covered by a thick metal overhang suspended from wires attached to the elevation at the top of the first row of windows. On the south elevation the third and fourth bays from the left are fully enclosed in brick and have a one-story dock built out to the south. For the entire building the second through tenth floors are fully enclosed. Each bay is clad in brick, bordered by concrete piers, and has one window on the left and a set of double windows of the right. All the windows are inset slightly from the brick cladding. Below each window is a horizontal concrete spandrel panel, and between each floor is a narrow concrete slab. The east and west facades are composed of three bays. The slightly recessed center bay has one window on the left and brick cladding on the right with concrete slabs between each floor. The first level of each the north and south bays is a continuation of the open-air verandas that extends to the center bay, while the upper floors are entirely brick-clad with no concrete divisions. A wide concrete panel forms a flush eave around the entire building. History St. James Chapel AME Church developed James House as a public housing serving The Ville neighborhood, the city’s most significant surviving historically African-American neighborhood. St. James Chapel AME Church is located across the street in a building completed in two phases in 1922 and 1951. Although depleted of housing stock through demolition, the surrounding neighborhood retains historic resources that convey the historic character of African-American settlement. The block of single and multiple dwellings to the east is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the St. Ferdinand Avenue in The Ville Historic District, and the neighborhood boundary in coterminous with The Ville Local Historic District boundary. To build James House, St. James Chapel AME Church acquired and demolished the Poro College building, established by entrepreneur Annie Malone and built in 1921. Poro College was a community landmark, yet had fallen vacant while The Ville had fallen from fashion for middle-class families after open housing efforts dissolved restrictions that had forced African-Americans to live in The Ville. The city issued the building permit for James House on September 18, 1969. Construction costs were $2 million, and Reliance Constriction Company was the builder. The ten-story housing tower opened in 1970, and has been continuously occupied since.


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Although programmatically utilitarian, James House has the most locally significant architectural firm of any building included in this study. Schwarz & Van Hoefen designed the James House during a prolific period of urban renewal design projects bearing the firm’s name. Founded in 1899 as Mauran, Russell & Garden, the firm’s name had many iterations until finally dissolving as the Kuhlmann Design Group in 1996. As the partnership of Arthur Schwarz & Hari Van Hoefen, the firm produced many major works for urban renewal projects in St. Louis: the master plan for Mill Creek Valley (1959-1965); National Register-listed Council Plaza (1967-69), developed under the Department and Housing Urban Development’s Section 202 program; and Mansion House Center (1967). The firm produced much of the work used by the City Plan Commission’s A Plan for Downtown St. Louis (1960). Schwarz & Van Hoefen’s urban renewal designs have been included in the recent St. Louis Modern study of non-residential modernist architecture in the city, and were published locally and nationally in their era. While an architectural survey completed in 2010 showed few resources in the core of The Ville built after 1950, it did identify several resources built in the 1960s by Africa-American institutions or developers attempting to renew the housing stock in the neighborhood and retain dwindling population. These resources are among the few resources associated with African-American settlement actually developed by African-Americans and their institutions. James House is the most significant of these developments.

Figure 22: View of James House, looking southwest from the intersection of Pendleton and St. Ferdinand avenues. June 2013.


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Figure 23: View of James House, looking northeast from the alley behind the building. June 2013.


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Figure 24: Rendering of James House, 1969. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.

Figure 25: James House site plan. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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Kingsbury Terrace Apartments (MO1-18) Location: 5655 Kingsbury Avenue Date of Construction: 1969 Architect: Stanford G. Brooks

Description This building is an 147-unit, eleven-story brown brick and concrete apartment building. It consists of 87 efficiency units and 60 one-bedroom units. The building has a T-shaped plan with a stunted cross axis and an elongated south-north central axis. The south façade is the primary entry point from the street. The first floor is an open-air veranda with five equidistant columns across the front. These columns protrude slightly from the face of the building and form piers that extend the height of the elevation to divide the four bays. Each bay has windows on the right and left sides with metal panels below and pale brick cladding between. A thin horizontal panel of concrete marks the end of each floor plane. On the symmetrical east and west elevations of the building there are five distinct vertical divisions from south to north. The southernmost section is clad in brick with concrete piers on each end and concrete slabs dividing the floors. The center three sections are composed of varying numbers of the basic bay unit seen on the south elevation: the second most-south section has one narrow bay of windows and two full bays, the next section three bays, and the third section two bays. The northern-most section of the façade is entirely clad in brick with horizontal concrete slabs between the floors. The third and fifth sections of these facades are aligned in plan and inset from the also aligned second and fourth sections. The north elevation is bordered in concrete, has one thick horizontal concrete division between the first and second floors and thin striping between all other floors, and each floor has one window on the far east and west with metal louvers below, and a small un-adorned center window.

History

Everett Schneider Construction Company developed the Kingsbury Apartments in the dense Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood just north of Forest Park. Stanford G. Brooks was the architect. The site had been occupied by a two-story reinforced concrete, brick-clad surgical supply warehouse built in 1924, with an electrical substation operated by Union Electric Company attached to its north end. In 1968, those facilities were demolished along with the famous “Winter Garden” entertainment venue to the west. The city issued the permit for the $1.7 million building on November 13, 1969, and construction was completed in March 1971. The building has been occupied continuously since completion. Stanford G. Brooks, designer of Kingsbury Terrace, graduated with a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Cornell University in 1951. The permit for Kingsbury Terrace lists Brooks’ address as 2800 S. Brentwood Boulevard in Brentwood, Missouri, but sources indicate that Brooks was actually based in Philadelphia for his entire career, including in 1969. Brooks was principal of Stanford G. Brooks & Associates, which designed many synagogues around the country as well as institutional and commercial buildings. Brooks passed away in Florida in 2000.


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Figure 26: The Kingsbury Terrace Apartments viewed northeast from Kingsbury Avenue. June 2013.


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Figure 27: The Kingsbury Terrace Apartments viewed southeast from the parking lot at rear. June 2013.


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Figure 28: Kingsbury Terrace Apartments rendering, 1969. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.

Figure 29: Typical floor plan, Kingsbury Terrace Apartments. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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Figure 30: Site plan for Kingsbury Terrace Apartments. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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Parkview Apartments (MO1-19)

Location: 4451 Forest Park Avenue Date of Construction: 1971 Architect: Jack H. Tyrer

Description The Parkview Apartments building is a thirteen-story red brick and concrete apartment building consisting of 397 units: 299 efficiency, 96 one-bedroom and 2 two-bedroom. The floor plan of the building is a slight V-shape opening to the south. On all four facades, a wide concrete band with deep striations separates the first floor from the upper twelve floors. On the south elevation the first floor is a series of windows that are inset from the upper floors; on the other three elevations the first floor is solid concrete. The main entrance is at the center of the southern façade under a non-historic portico with eight stunted brick columns each supporting two dark brown metal poles and an oversized concrete cornice with a flat metal roof above. This entry is located at the base of the brick clad central axis of the building, identified by a projecting three-window bay extends above the roofline of the main façade and is capped in a smooth concrete cornice inset from the façade. To either side of this bay are symmetrical front elevations defined by groupings of windows and their steel paneling below which are divided vertically by protruding concrete piers and horizontally by thin concrete slabs. Each half of the elevation is symmetrical within itself and is composed of two narrow strips of brick cladding at each end, two sets of two windows, two sets of four windows, and 12 sets of three windows. The square form of the groups of three windows is the dominant rhythmic pattern to the entire elevation. The east and west elevations are flat brick cladding with a center line of windows and their respective base steel panels. The north (rear) elevation is identical to the front except for the central axis of the building, which is wider than at the front and has a group of six windows at each floor divided by wide concrete spandrel panels. The base of the north elevation is dominated by service doors.

History Prominent local real estate firm Jack Dubinsky & Sons formed the Parkview Gardens partnership to develop the Parkview Apartments in the city’s Central West End. At the time, the neighborhood’s housing stock, consisting of late 19th and early 20th century flats and single dwellings built for the upper middle class and wealthy, was depreciated. The project produced the most distinct building form of all of the Turnkey towers under SLHA ownership: a V-shaped mass with central entrance. Despite the unique form, the building’s interpretation of Modern Movement design principles was not innovative or noteworthy. Inclusion of structured rather than surface parking also was unique for a Turnkey project, although not for high-rise housing in St. Louis at the time. Architect Jack H. Tyrer, with office listed at 7730 Carondelet Avenue in Clayton, designed the building. Tyrer also designed the Chromalloy Plaza office building in downtown Clayton (1973). In 1970, Dubinsky & Sons demolished a group of three-story flats to clear the site. The city issued the building permit for the 13-story tower on June 25, 1971. H.B. Deal Construction Company built the building, at a reported construction cost of $6,318.285. The Parkview Apartments opened in December 1972 and remain in use. Today, the Central West End’s housing stock is highly valued, and little demolition of the sort that Dubinsky undertook to build this building occurs.


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Figure 31: The Parkview Apartments viewed toward the northeast from Forest Park Avenue. June 2013.


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Figure 32: The Parkview Apartments’ entrance bay, viewed toward the northwest. June 2013.


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Figure 33: The rear of the Parkview Apartments, showing the structured parking decks, viewed toward the southwest from the alley. June 2013.


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Figure 34: Rendering of the Parkview Apartments, 1971. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.

Figure 35: The Parkview Apartments site plan. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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West Pine Apartments (MO1-17)

Location: 4490 West Pine Boulevard Date of Construction: 1970 Architect: Arthur J. Sitzwohl

Description The West Pine Apartments building is an L-shaped ten story dull gray reinforced concrete building with 128 total units. The base of the L runs east-west along West Pine and the height of the L runs north-south along Taylor, forming a semi-enclosed parking and yard space in the interior of the site. The reinforced concrete posts that structure the building are visible as a field of one-story columns that create an open-air veranda on the eastern half of the ground level. The columns in the rest of the lower level are engaged in brick with full-height windows. From east (left) to west, the north elevation is composed of six bays: one with a single central set of windows, two with two sets of windows, another central single central window, a wider bay above the main entry with four protruding two-story reinforced concrete balconies, and a final solid concrete bay. Behind each balcony are two widely spaced double windows with doors below. The west elevation is composed of five identical two-window bays. The south and east elevations each have three two-window bays. The south and east (short) ends of the L floor plan are slightly darker reinforced concrete with no windows and a wide central enclosed stairwell that protrudes out from the elevation. A slight concrete eave runs around the top of the building. History Creative Communities, Inc. developed the West Pine Apartments for SLHA. The company acquired three parcels at the southeast corner of West Pine and Taylor avenues in the Central West End in 1970. The company wrecked three historic mansions to clear the site for the new housing tower. The city issued the building permit for the $1,510,000 building on June 16, 1970. Dave Wallace Construction Company built the building to the designs of architect Arthur J. Sitzwohl & Associates. The dimensions of the original section were 110’ by 46’ with a wing of 69’ by 46’. The L-shaped plan with vehicle pass-through is unlike any other Turnkey tower built for SLHA, but is not architecturally significant. The stucco facing of the building is also unique for the program, but the design received no local publication at the time and is not considered to be significant. Arthur J. Sitzwohl & Associates existed from 1968 through 1997, but produced no designs that have been identified by historians as locally important.


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Figure 36: The West Pine Apartments viewed southeast from the intersection of West Pine and Taylor avenues. June 2013.

Figure 37: The West Pine Apartments viewed northeast from Taylor Avenues. June 2013.


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Figure 38: The West Pine Apartments viewed northwest from the alley. June 2013.

Figure 39: Rendering of the West Pine Apartments, 1970. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.


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Figure 40: West Pine Apartments site plan. Source: St. Louis Housing Authority.

High Rise Public Housing Towers in St. Louis

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