WHEN PRESERVATION EQUALS DEMOLITION
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By BRADFORD McKEE
Published: March 31, 2005
St. Louis
FOR 108 years the neo-Classical style Century Building, with its 10-story marble facades accented by ornate friezes and pilasters, graced half a block in downtown St. Louis.
But after 15 years of fighting by local preservationists it was razed in February to make way for a garage.
The battle for the Century, with its familiar plot and cast of characters - preservationists squaring off against developers and politicians - resembled a typical preservation dispute. Yet it had an unusual twist: for the first time anyone involved can remember, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the country's most powerful preservation group, sided with the wreckers. In fact the redevelopment project that led to the Century's demise was financed with the national trust's help.
Although the circumstances surrounding the Century are unusual, critics say the national trust, a private nonprofit organization with more than 200,000 members, has set a dangerous precedent.
For Carolyn Hewes Toft, the president of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, which has become an improbable adversary of the trust, its position was a violation of its mission to preserve historic structures. Ms. Toft suggested that the national trust had lost its integrity and said that of all the demolitions she had witnessed, "this loss is by far the most difficult to accept."
Officials at the national trust said that its part in the demolition reflects the changing role of preservation, which they said includes fighting urban sprawl and reviving entire downtown areas, as well as saving historic buildings and sites.
Increasingly, the national trust is "using preservation as a tool for community revitalization," said Richard Moe, its president. Sacrificing the Century, he added, was in line with the trust's efforts to broker the renewal of historic but rundown neighborhoods like downtown St. Louis, even at the occasional expense of a treasured building.
But for many preservationists, like Michael Tomlan, the director of the graduate program in historic preservation at Cornell University, that price is too high. What the national trust did, Mr. Tomlan said, was wrong. "It's morally and in any number of senses ethically inappropriate. It violates preservation's Hippocratic oath: if you can't be supportive, for gosh sakes shut up."
Like the issues in most preservation battles, those surrounding the Century and downtown redevelopment here were complicated and played out over years as the parties jockeyed to influence the outcome.
The Century's fate was linked to the redevelopment of another building across the street, the Old Post Office, from the 1880's, which is the centerpiece of downtown renewal projects.
In 2001, when national trust officials were asked to consult on the transfer of the Old Post Office from federal to state ownership, they at first backed saving the Century. Missouri lined up two developers to restore, manage and lease the building for 99 years. Two tenants, Webster University and the state appellate courts, had already signed on.
But the tenants demanded parking within view of the Old Post Office for security reasons. The developers, Steven Stogel of the DFC Group and Mark Schnuck of the Desco Group, local companies, did not want to spend the money to build underground parking and insisted that the Century was the only nearby above-ground site big enough for 1,000 cars. City officials agreed.
Royce A. Yeater, the national trust's regional director for the Midwest, said he tried to persuade the developers and the city to consider alternative sites, but they were intransigent. "The minds were made up within the power structure," Mr. Yeater said in an interview. Mr. Stogel, the developer, said he studied all the alternatives offered, including an empty site directly north of the Old Post Office. "We reluctantly determined that we had to provide parking on the Century site," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/garden/31pres.html?hp
By BRADFORD McKEE
Published: March 31, 2005
St. Louis
FOR 108 years the neo-Classical style Century Building, with its 10-story marble facades accented by ornate friezes and pilasters, graced half a block in downtown St. Louis.
But after 15 years of fighting by local preservationists it was razed in February to make way for a garage.
The battle for the Century, with its familiar plot and cast of characters - preservationists squaring off against developers and politicians - resembled a typical preservation dispute. Yet it had an unusual twist: for the first time anyone involved can remember, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the country's most powerful preservation group, sided with the wreckers. In fact the redevelopment project that led to the Century's demise was financed with the national trust's help.
Although the circumstances surrounding the Century are unusual, critics say the national trust, a private nonprofit organization with more than 200,000 members, has set a dangerous precedent.
For Carolyn Hewes Toft, the president of the Landmarks Association of St. Louis, which has become an improbable adversary of the trust, its position was a violation of its mission to preserve historic structures. Ms. Toft suggested that the national trust had lost its integrity and said that of all the demolitions she had witnessed, "this loss is by far the most difficult to accept."
Officials at the national trust said that its part in the demolition reflects the changing role of preservation, which they said includes fighting urban sprawl and reviving entire downtown areas, as well as saving historic buildings and sites.
Increasingly, the national trust is "using preservation as a tool for community revitalization," said Richard Moe, its president. Sacrificing the Century, he added, was in line with the trust's efforts to broker the renewal of historic but rundown neighborhoods like downtown St. Louis, even at the occasional expense of a treasured building.
But for many preservationists, like Michael Tomlan, the director of the graduate program in historic preservation at Cornell University, that price is too high. What the national trust did, Mr. Tomlan said, was wrong. "It's morally and in any number of senses ethically inappropriate. It violates preservation's Hippocratic oath: if you can't be supportive, for gosh sakes shut up."
Like the issues in most preservation battles, those surrounding the Century and downtown redevelopment here were complicated and played out over years as the parties jockeyed to influence the outcome.
The Century's fate was linked to the redevelopment of another building across the street, the Old Post Office, from the 1880's, which is the centerpiece of downtown renewal projects.
In 2001, when national trust officials were asked to consult on the transfer of the Old Post Office from federal to state ownership, they at first backed saving the Century. Missouri lined up two developers to restore, manage and lease the building for 99 years. Two tenants, Webster University and the state appellate courts, had already signed on.
But the tenants demanded parking within view of the Old Post Office for security reasons. The developers, Steven Stogel of the DFC Group and Mark Schnuck of the Desco Group, local companies, did not want to spend the money to build underground parking and insisted that the Century was the only nearby above-ground site big enough for 1,000 cars. City officials agreed.
Royce A. Yeater, the national trust's regional director for the Midwest, said he tried to persuade the developers and the city to consider alternative sites, but they were intransigent. "The minds were made up within the power structure," Mr. Yeater said in an interview. Mr. Stogel, the developer, said he studied all the alternatives offered, including an empty site directly north of the Old Post Office. "We reluctantly determined that we had to provide parking on the Century site," he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/garden/31pres.html?hp
