Reported by Landmarks Association of St. Louis on Facebook:
Bethlehem Lutheran had back wall fall Friday now sadly in full demolition
^^ Near Northside I believe
There was a pretty good photo album of the interior a few months ago:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67631347@ ... 8223586546
Sad to see it go. The stained glass windows are amazing. Anybody know if they will be recovered?
There was a pretty good photo album of the interior a few months ago:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67631347@ ... 8223586546
Sad to see it go. The stained glass windows are amazing. Anybody know if they will be recovered?
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The building is at Salisbury and N. Florissant on the edge of Hyde Park, and has stood in the same location for about 105 years, give or take. For the last 20 or so, maybe longer, it's been empty. The congregation shrank when most of the Germans in the area moved to other places. The building is another in the line of losses due to population and neighborhood decline. Look through your Google Glass and you'll see that this is just another of many Hyde Park area buildings ready to be lost.
Still, this one is particularly troubling because the whole thing was so obvious. The building had been tagged as historic and threatened for years. Everyone saw this coming. Yet, the owner, the Lutheran Church, never cooperated with anyone trying to salvage or find other uses for the building. They were really quite silent about the whole thing. And since the organization is tax exempt, the building never went to tax sale.
We have a lot of problems in this city. One of them is the lack of leverage or enforcement on building owners letting their properties rot. It's sort of weird. It's almost as if they think it's their god given right to let their properties fall apart, and nobody can do a thing to stop them.
The Lutheran Church is a relatively small organization. I think nationally there are only something like 8,000,000 members. So spending millions on vacant buildings really is beyond their focus. But still, you'd think they'd have some shame in all of this. I wonder if any reporter has ever interviewed the pastor, or the HQ folks down in Kirkwood, to ask them why they were doing nothing to help preserve this landmark?
Regardless, looking in the mirror, kvetching about the whole thing now is really sort of lame. Is that the best we can do? Moan and complain when another cool building meets the wrecking ball? Or, well, maybe that is it. Thank goodness for the internet....
Still, this one is particularly troubling because the whole thing was so obvious. The building had been tagged as historic and threatened for years. Everyone saw this coming. Yet, the owner, the Lutheran Church, never cooperated with anyone trying to salvage or find other uses for the building. They were really quite silent about the whole thing. And since the organization is tax exempt, the building never went to tax sale.
We have a lot of problems in this city. One of them is the lack of leverage or enforcement on building owners letting their properties rot. It's sort of weird. It's almost as if they think it's their god given right to let their properties fall apart, and nobody can do a thing to stop them.
The Lutheran Church is a relatively small organization. I think nationally there are only something like 8,000,000 members. So spending millions on vacant buildings really is beyond their focus. But still, you'd think they'd have some shame in all of this. I wonder if any reporter has ever interviewed the pastor, or the HQ folks down in Kirkwood, to ask them why they were doing nothing to help preserve this landmark?
Regardless, looking in the mirror, kvetching about the whole thing now is really sort of lame. Is that the best we can do? Moan and complain when another cool building meets the wrecking ball? Or, well, maybe that is it. Thank goodness for the internet....
Pardon the nostalgia, but this placed served as a major educator for me as a young county person. I played a fair amount of basketball in the campus' gym in the mid 90s. Bethlehem and Word of Life were the two city churches I had repeated exposure to and both places came to be mental symbols that were part of everyday life (i.e. not the brewery or Busch, or Ted Drewes...) as I slowly started to understand the "North Side" "South Side" urban boundaries and characteristics. I remember going to these churches on Sunday afternoons and feeling like I had traveled to another world. Parents would stand around and talk about how they had grow up near here or there and how they "rarely come down here anymore"....We've mentioned on other threads about kids' exposure to and appreciation for urban living, and those Sundays, while brief and focal, were significant. As late as 1996-2000 the gym was still functional, but I was never in the sanctuary.
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That little Lutheran congregation is not to blame for this disaster. With only about 150 members, many very poor, they hunted down resources and built 100 new homes and renovated 150 existing homes in the neighborhood over the last decade or so. They also opened a public charter school serving 100 neighborhood kids. Their focus was on building a great city, not a great church. And they never asked to be thanked.
To my knowledge, Bethlehem Lutheran is still an active church, and they have been a source of incredible renewal in the Hyde Park neighborhood. I hope they can survive the loss of their sanctuary. The city would be worse off without them.
To my knowledge, Bethlehem Lutheran is still an active church, and they have been a source of incredible renewal in the Hyde Park neighborhood. I hope they can survive the loss of their sanctuary. The city would be worse off without them.
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Agreed. Stories like this are pretty common. Small congregations end up owning huge edifices, and the cost of maintaining buildings eventually eat them alive.That little Lutheran congregation is not to blame for this disaster. With only about 150 members, many very poor, they hunted down resources and built 100 new homes and renovated 150 existing homes in the neighborhood over the last decade or so. They also opened a public charter school serving 100 neighborhood kids. Their focus was on building a great city, not a great church. And they never asked to be thanked.
To my knowledge, Bethlehem Lutheran is still an active church, and they have been a source of incredible renewal in the Hyde Park neighborhood. I hope they can survive the loss of their sanctuary. The city would be worse off without them.
The congregation continues in a small building next to the old church. The one question that is unclear is why wouldn't the congregation/LCMS have agreed years ago to sell the big building?
From what's being related anecdotally, the building was never made available, until it eventually collapsed. If that's the case, then the church does have some blame for its demise.
They would have been better off donating it to some other group years ago, rather than simply letting it rot away. I don't get the motivation there.
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i'm gonna guess they wanted a convenient parking lot.
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According to the article in today's Post-Dispatch, the small congregation of 150 or so parishioners couldn't afford the cost of repairs, which had mushroomed from < $100,000 some years ago to over $3,000,000 today.
The most recent indignity on the building was apparently a group of artists doing boudoir photography up in the vacant bell tower. The congregation couldn't take it any more.
Finally gravity and the elements won out, bringing the building down.
I seriously doubt the congregation had any plans for the building. Tearing a place like that down costs a fortune.
I don't see this a case of bad intent. I see it as a case of lack of intent.
The most recent indignity on the building was apparently a group of artists doing boudoir photography up in the vacant bell tower. The congregation couldn't take it any more.
Finally gravity and the elements won out, bringing the building down.
I seriously doubt the congregation had any plans for the building. Tearing a place like that down costs a fortune.
I don't see this a case of bad intent. I see it as a case of lack of intent.
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Very sad loss. If anyone's interested I have some photos taken a year ago, a week ago, and today (they're a bit out of order) in this flickr set: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pasa/sets ... 3562592094.
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It's a real loss all around. I can't speak to any previous willingness or unwillingness to sell the building. I would be surprised if developers were lining up to renovate the place, though.
The Missouri Synod does have to sign off on any property sale in that denomination, so it's not up to the congregation alone. I know of at least one instance in St. Louis City, though, in which the LCMS actually donated a historic building to a congregation in another denomination.
Large church properties are challenging animals to redevelop. Look how long Second Baptist at Kingshighway and MacPherson has stood vacant ... and that one has a killer location and a huge parking lot behind it.
The Missouri Synod does have to sign off on any property sale in that denomination, so it's not up to the congregation alone. I know of at least one instance in St. Louis City, though, in which the LCMS actually donated a historic building to a congregation in another denomination.
Large church properties are challenging animals to redevelop. Look how long Second Baptist at Kingshighway and MacPherson has stood vacant ... and that one has a killer location and a huge parking lot behind it.
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^ Presby,
are you familiar with Cleveland's Sacred Landmarks Project? I'm not sure how much it has developed in recent years, but I believe there is some financial assistance for preservation of endangered historic houses of worship as well as mapping, inventorying city-wide. Might be something to look into as a possible model for Saint Louis if you're not aware.
are you familiar with Cleveland's Sacred Landmarks Project? I'm not sure how much it has developed in recent years, but I believe there is some financial assistance for preservation of endangered historic houses of worship as well as mapping, inventorying city-wide. Might be something to look into as a possible model for Saint Louis if you're not aware.
And then there is this from Edwardsville:
http://www.kmov.com/news/mobile/Edwards ... 63701.html
http://www.kmov.com/news/mobile/Edwards ... 63701.html
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North City has a history of large churches from once predominantly white congregations being sold and finding new life traditional African American houses of worship. Had this been done the building might have remained in use and survived.
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_even ... ef-history
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_even ... ef-history
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i wish they could save the facade of that church and that story makes me want to vomit a parking lot really ... whats going to happen with all the bricks hope they get recycled for new developments
BrickCity4470 wrote:i wish they could save the facade of that church and that story makes me want to vomit a parking lot really ... whats going to happen with all the bricks hope they get recycled for new developments
They probably could save the facade...the towers look to be in quite good shape. Of course they won't, but they could. Maybe City Museum will be able to get the lion's share of it and rebuild it downtown...that would be the best possible outcome at this point, in my opinion.
Obviously the city loses many buildings a year - while it irritates me when we lose houses, flats and storefronts, I know those can be reproduced in some for - probably pretty close to replicas - we have seen this happen in new development over the years.
This is different - there is no way the scale and detail of Bethlehem can be reproduced, its gone forever and the surrounding neighborhood is poorer for it
Some things you can write off, some flat out suck - this is the latter
This is different - there is no way the scale and detail of Bethlehem can be reproduced, its gone forever and the surrounding neighborhood is poorer for it
Some things you can write off, some flat out suck - this is the latter
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Yeah, it sucks. Let's all agree. It sucks.
What irritates me about this is that it's pretty obvious the people that built BLC intended it to stand for centuries. The artistry, the level of craft and detail - these are not things that say "transience." To me, letting a building like this rot is exactly the same as pissing on the gravesite of every craftsman that labored on it and defacing their headstones. It's bad enough that swinging a staple gun and hanging Tyvek counts as "craftsmanship" these days. There were other solutions. Even when a wall falls there are other solutions, such as shoring up the rest of the building that didn't fall. You can see pretty clearly in the photos that the scissor trusses were just fine. Anyway, when something is broken, you ***** fix it. You don't just throw up your hands and call the demo crew. Also, compare pictures of the interior of the old sanctuary with the interior of the new sanctuary. The new one is a joke.
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Yeah, but what there weren't counting on were 60 years of white (and now black) flight and suburban sprawl. That's what killed this building.What irritates me about this is that it's pretty obvious the people that built BLC intended it to stand for centuries.
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^Yes. Let's not blame the folks who stayed behind and sacrificed for the neighborhood.
At the same time, should they be given a free pass when they allowed their building to fall into such a state of disrepair? By neglecting it, they were contributing to the blight of the neighborhood; people that live there have had to walk past that hulking, decaying church for years while the owners didn't so much as board up the windows. How does that affect the psyche of the neighborhood?
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I suspect we're dealing with a lack of resources. What can be done when a homeowner lacks the resources to maintain their historic home? It's easy to blame them, but the poor don't typically have good options. When the building becomes unfit for habitation, all they can do is move out. And in north city, there's usually not a developer waiting to buy your house and renovate it.
It seems to me that these are issues of structural evil on a societal level, not personal evil on the part of the homeowner. If so, then this situation calls for larger structural change.
It seems to me that these are issues of structural evil on a societal level, not personal evil on the part of the homeowner. If so, then this situation calls for larger structural change.
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This news saddens me -- my grandparents and dad attended this church back in the day. But I'm surprised at the anger over this. It seems like when something like this happens there's always a tendency to blame people for it. But is it clear that anyone who had the money to preserve the building was interested in purchasing it? I haven't seen any evidence that there was.
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^ i'm not going to point fingers here as i don't know the details but, in general, i think the responsibly to preserves lies in the hands of the current owner(s) much more so than any tentative or nonexistent buyers. when you purchase a historic building like this you take on the responsibility of stewardship. granted financial situations change, and in such circumstances the owner is responsible for making a reasonable effort to find a new caretaker for the building. the question in this case is what kind of effort, if any, did the congregation make to find a new caretaker for the building.