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Tag Archives: Historic Preservation
It Takes A Lot Before A Building Can’t Be Saved
Partially collapsed rowhouse in St. Louis (Courtesy Dotage St. Louis)
When in architecture school in St. Louis, I remember professors often saying that a building is salvageable until it’s town down. It just depends on the priorities of the community and the willingness to take on a challenge.
Take the above partially collapsed rowhouse in St. Louis as an example. If this building were in Louisville, it would likely have been torn down soon after it suffered the collapse, but in St. Louis, demolition requests were denied and the structure was renovated as seen in the photo below.
While this example is in the up-and-coming Lafayette Square neighborhood of St. Louis, there are also examples of similar renovations in in less well off neighborhoods with similar result. Based on these examples, it seems like demolitions like these shouldn’t have ever happened.
Here’s another interesting story of a near preservation success in New York’s cast-iron district of SoHo from the Architect’s Newspaper:
“In 2004, excavation work was underway at neighboring 72 Grand Street, on the corner of Wooster Street. According to neighbors, the work was far from adequate, especially given the area’s silty soil. Then it rained for almost two weeks. The foundation at 74 Grand buckled. The five-story loft building slid a full 13.5 inches out of alignment, leading to emergency shoring and evacuation.”
The building stood with emergency shoring for years and as the building’s foundation continued to shift five years later, the city eventually decided the building had to be town down. The demolition clearly wasn’t an easy decision.
The point of these two examples is to show that preservation can happen even in seemingly impossible situations. Louisville simply needs to take a stand and declare that it values its history and its current stock of historic buildings.
There are two big preservation battles going on in Louisville right now, the effort to save the Iron Quarter buildings and a similar effort to save an 1830s era house in Mockingbird Valley. Perhaps we can make a stand as a community and keep these historic buildings standing.
Rowhouse under renovation (Courtesy Dotage St. Louis)
PrintAnother Preservation Emergency In Mockingbird Valley
Rock Hill mansion in Mockingbird Valley threatened (via Bing maps)
May is National Preservation Month and it appears Louisville is celebrating with a dozen attempts to tear down historic buildings. The latest is an historic mansion perched atop a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. Dating to 1830, the Rock Hill mansion (aka the Callahan House) at 405 Mockingbird Valley Road now finds itself in the crosshairs of the wrecking ball.
The original portion of the house was built in 1830 and later rebuilt in 1885 after a fire. A dramatic front porch with Doric columns faces the river. It sits on a 20-acre compound with several ancillary buildings including an old school house and a cemetery.
According to a C-J report, the owners say a rear wall has shifted and become unstable prompting the demolition request. The owners claim it would cost “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to rebuild the wall and fix the house, money they aren’t prepared to invest.
Neighborhood groups and preservationists have mounted a campaign to declare the mansion a Local Landmark, but time is running out fast. A 30-day demolition moratorium expires today, but the owners say they don’t plan to demolish the property immediately.
The Mockingbird Valley Preservation Alliance and Preservation Louisville have been talking with the owners about the issue and circulating a petition for Landmark status requiring 200 signatures. You can download a copy of the petition to sign at Louisville History & Issues or contact Preservation Louisville at director (at) preservationlouisville (dot) org.
The unstable wall issue reminds me of the collapsed wall that threatened the Ouerbacker House on Jefferson Street in recent years. Studio Kremer Architects took the mansion under its wings and repaired the wall with a $100,000 grant from Metro Louisville. Perhaps this antebellum mansion can find a similar repair.
Support The Iron Quarter At Friday’s Trolley Hop
Preservation Celebration (Courtesy City Properties Group)
This Friday, May 7 is a trolley hop day and May is National Preservation Month. What better time for a preservation-minded trolley hop? The developers behind the Whiskey Row Lofts thought so (that’s Bill Weyland, Valle Jones, and Stephen Jones), and are sponsoring an open house to discuss preservation at the Whiskey Row Gallery at 131 West Main Street from 5:30 until 9:00 PM. Food and refreshment will be provided, so show up (by bike would be great since it’s also Bike to Work Month) and lend your support to the Iron Quarter block and preservation in general in Louisville.
Preservation Louisville Talks Historic Buildings
Preservation Louisville discusses historic buildings (photo courtesy Joanne Weeter)
Preservation Louisville announced their annual list of the 10 Most Endangered Historic Structures last week and added a new list to celebrate Louisville’s Top Ten Preservation Successes. The preservation group gathered in front of the Whiskey Row Lofts and Iron Quarter buildings on Main Street to announce the 2009 lists. Here’s a little background on the most endangered list from Preservation Louisville:
“A “most endangered” list is a preservation tool for recognizing sites with historic, cultural or archaeological significance that are directly threatened or in immediate danger of being lost. The “Endangered Properties” list has a long history in Louisville. It was initially created by Preservation Alliance, and in 1999 the list was taken over by The Louisville Historic League. The list is now compiled and published by Preservation Louisville, Inc., Louisville’s citywide preservation organization since 2007.”
This year’s endangered list includes several hold-overs from years past that still remain threatened to some extent. New for the list, several broad categories of building type such as “shotgun houses” were added to draw attention to the general plight of a building typology. This classification was added as the group hopes to focus more on the buildings themselves than pointing fingers at specific buildings or people. Here are the properties the group feels are endangered this year:
- Shotgun Houses across Louisville. Louisville’s collection of shotgun houses makes up 10% of the housing stock and represents the second largest assortment besides New Orleans. Currently, the majority of demolitions in the city are issued for shotgun houses.
- Water Company Block Historic Buildings. This assortment of buildings ranging from an old parking garage to an Odd Fellows Hall has been on the endangered list since 2005. In all, five historic structures are threatened by the the Cordish Cos. plans to build a shopping and entertainment development called Center City as an expansion of 4th Street Live. The city currently owns all the buildings are will hand them over to Cordish in the future.
- Victorian House on Frankfort Avenue. Another holdover from 2005, the house at 2225 Frankfort Avenue adjacent to Ginny’s Diner was in “decent, livable condition” as of 2000 but has fallen into drastic disrepair. It’s averted demolition once and is currently for sale by calling 502.797.8770.
- Historic firehouses across Louisville. Making off-and-on appearances since 2006, Louisville’s oldest firehouses are deemed endangered as they are replaced by new facilities. The city has told us that they hope to find suitable private-sector use for at least some of the defunct stations.
- Myers Hall / Old Dental School at Brook & Broadway. Built in 1918, the structure that once housed the Louisville College of Dentistry was in discussions a while back that could have resulted in demolition. U of L is planning to move remaining offices out of the building soon due to deteriorating conditions, but says it has no plans to demolish the building.
- Park Hill district. The entire Park Hill district, once an industrial hub in Louisville, was listed last year but faces continued threats of demolition and deterioration as grand industrial buildings sit vacant. The city hopes to revitalize this area in the future and is currently studying how to move forward.
- Corner store fronts across Louisville. Once the epitome of convenience to walk to the corner for daily necessities, many corner stores are vacant as retail has left for the shopping centers. Many vacant structures, once marks of community pride, sit vacant and deteriorating.
- Historic properties within the proposed new bridge route. This old-timer has been on the list since 1999, and Preservation Louisville plans to keep it listed until plans for all affected buildings are resolved. One building on the corner of Jefferson Street and Jackson Street that would have been in the way of the bridge has already been demolished.
- Iron Quarter buildings. Occupying the site of a proposed mixed-use development, the structures are in varying degrees of deterioration. Plans called for demolishing the buildings but leaving the facades, but the project has been put on hold for the time being. The group would like to see the buildings saved in their entirety, noting that a true preservation group must promote saving entire buildings, not just facades. Developer Todd Blue of Cobalt Ventures had no comment regarding the Iron Quarter buildings, but noted his dedication to preservation in Louisville in the past several years.
- Ouerbacker House. The grand mansion was first listed in 2005 and briefly flirted with demolition last year after a portion of a wall buckled. Scott Kremer of Studio K Architects came on board to save the structure and fixed the caved in wall with help from a government grant. Renovation work hasn’t yet begun, and Preservation Louisville plans to keep the building on the list until an adaptive reuse proposal is funded. We couldn’t reach the developer for comment.
To promote historic preservation in the city, Preservation Louisville also wanted to draw attention to some of the success stories, creating a new list of saved buildings. One problem with beginning the new list from scratch, it seems, is that there is much more great preservation activity than can fit in ten spots. We’re not going to recount all the details of this list, but Preservation Louisville has written up each listing on their web site. More info on Corbett’s Restaurant can be found here and info about the Reynolds Lofts here. Below are the projects Preservation Louisville finds outstanding:
- U.S. Marine Hospital.
- East Market Street Wayside buildings.
- Vogt Mansion / Lemon Galleries on East Broadway.
- Henry Clay building.
- Reynolds Building.
- American Standard Building.
- 1254 South Brook Street.
- Howard Hardy House.
- Corbett’s “An American Place” Restaurant.
- 1702 Prentice Street aka Habitat for Humanity House.
- Preservation Louisville (Official Site)
Hurricane Damaged Building Back Better Than Ever
Rebuilt Bargain Supply storage building
A building damaged in Wind Storm 2008 on Liberty Street in Phoenix Hill has now been fully rebuilt. The 1880′s era commercial vernacular building could have been just another casualty of Hurricane Ike, but the owners, Bargain Supply Company (located on the same block), decided to fix the building instead of tear it down. And they went beyond our expectations.
Before the windstorm, the windows on the upper floor had been substantially reduced in size with brick infill. It always looks a little strange to see a stone lintel several courses of brick above the actual window. The faded yellow-ish paint was peeling and what was left of the window apertures was boarded up. The building needed help; then the winds blew.
A large portion of the roof was severed from the structure, dislodging bricks from the parapet and causing the front facade to bow. The city declared the structure a “Dangerous Building.” The building was still sturdy, and repair work was in the plans. In December, scaffolding was put in place and crews began to rebuild the top floor facade and replace the roof.
The finished product is still just a warehouse, but the building lends a much more inviting face to the street. All the upper floor window openings were restored to their original size and now they even have windows. A new stone parapet cap was put in place and a fresh coat of paint completed the work. Quite a transformation a hurricane can make.
- Scaffolding Watch: Danerous PH Building Being Tamed (Broken Sidewalk)
- Dude, Where’s My Roof: Phoenix Hill Edition (Broken Sidewalk)
- Demo Watch: East Jefferson Street Building Reduced To Rubble (Broken Sidewalk)
Bargain Supply building repair work
New Mixed-Use Project Aims To Revitalize Butchertown
Butchertown Pointe on Washington Street
A long boarded up industrial property on Washington Street just west of Cabel Street in Butchertown is set to become a new mixed-use creative hub for the historic neighborhood. The project has been dubbed Butchertown Pointe to recall the memory of the old Pointe neighborhood destroyed in the 1937 flood that sat just north of the site. When complete this summer, the one-story brick and timber building will house 35,000 to 40,000 square feet of much needed commercial and retail space in the predominantly residential neighborhood.
Butchertown Pointe is being developed by Ron & Aaron Tasman and Brian Scalabrine of Tasman Capital who were drawn to the Butchertown neighborhood by its potential as a vibrant urban neighborhood. Ron and Brian along with associate Gene Rosenstein have already had great success redeveloping a large stretch of Baxter Avenue that’s home to many of Louisville’s favorite establishments such as Wick’s Pizza and Nios nightclub. Gene has also been instrumental in the groups Butchertown project. Brian Scalabrine, who plays for the Boston Celtics, has been impressed with Louisville’s strong neighborhoods and brings a unique perspective to the redevelopment with ideas from Boston and major cities on the West Coast. The group thinks Louisville has as much potential as any major city, especially with its strong creative community.
Their new project hopes to tap into that creative scene to establish a vibrancy at Butchertown Pointe and the neighborhood beyond. Already, several leases have been signed with creative and graphic firms for the new space and the building’s design is meant to foster collaboration and “coworking” throughout. A grand 21 foot wide corridor forms the entrance of Butchertown Pointe and serves as a mixing space inside. The wide open interior spaces, high ceilings, and massive skylights help create an open and modern feeling in the historic structure. The redevelopment project retrofits the 19th century to create a high-tech office environment and could include a small theater and spaces for events. The project is being designed by Potter & Associates of Main Street and the renderings were produced by Visual Scientists of Highland Avenue.
- Butchertown Pointe (Official Site)
Click through to read more and for more photos and interior renderings.
Limerick Seeing Rebirth One Building At A Time
Commercial building under renovation
A group of four investors has been quietly working to revitalize the Limerick neighborhood adjacent to Old Louisville. Shine Properties has already finished renovating two historic shotgun houses on Seventh Street and Zane Street and is now tackling its largest project yet: a two-story commercial building on the corner of Seventh Street and St. Catherine Street.
The brick structure had been in terrible shape before the investors came across it. Water damage had weakened the interior walls, and some of the floor had to be replaced from rot. The exterior of the will be completely tuck-pointed and the commercial store-front will be restored to its original configuration. The building dates to the 1800s and was reportedly once a bread bakery. Plans are evolving, but the ground floor could again contain retail space and the upper floor could possibly be a two-bedroom apartment or an office.
Shine Properties consists of real estate agent Matthew Gilles, architect Mosley Putney, Gregg Rochmann, and Jonathan Bevan. Mosley has designed the group’s renovations so far. Gregg and Jonathan moved to Louisville only two years ago from the northeast after seeing the potential of the city first hand. Shine’s goal right now it to revitalize Limerick and bring back a community to an often overlooked historic neighborhood.
Matt Gilles explained that many derelict buildings in the area are in desperate need of work. Sitting boarded up, they serve as “rat traps and fire hazards”, but purchasing them for renovation or redevelopment is often hindered by complicated deed structures. Upon finding a now renovated shotgun house on Seventh Street, Matt knew he wanted the house before even seeing the interior. He says working with properties in such terrible shape from the outset can be frustrating, but rebuilding Limerick is worth it.
The team doesn’t want to work on the neighborhood alone, either. Shine Properties hopes to bring Limerick to a tipping point where additional investment from others, both developers and individuals, can become commonplace. They also hope to bring the highest quality product possible to the area. Matt says as a real estate agent, utility bills are of top priority to buyers and renters alike. The two houses already rehabbed include energy efficient systems like tankless hot water heaters, bio-foam insulation in the walls, and 14″ of ceiling insulation. These extras cost more, but are worth it in the long run, Matt says.
Limerick is lucky to have found a development team so dedicated to the neighborhood. Shine Properties plans to be there for the long haul, too, and see the neighborhood into better times. This involves more than just fixing up abandoned buildings. One simple way the team contributes to the community beyond renovation work is keeping the area clean. Workers pick up not just their own trash but any litter they see around their project. Shine Properties knows that neighborhoods trash reflects badly upon everyone and wants to create a clean and safe area for their projects.
- Shine Properties (Official Site)
Click through for more photos inside and out and before renovation started.
Facade Watch: Lowering The Iron Curtain
Metal facade stripped from New Albany building
Back in the 20th century, folks didn’t appreciate historic architecture like we do today. There was something about intricately carved stone details that must have been off-putting to them. Many a building not demolished was covered from head to toe in a metal or tile anti-facade. Upper-story windows were made useless, but that was okay because cities weren’t for people… suburbs were for people. Today, we’re timidly peeling away these mistakes and crossing our fingers something of the historic facade still remains underneath. New Albany got lucky this time. A near-perfectly preserved three-story brick and stone building has emerged from under the iron curtain and is preparing for a facelift.
This building on Pearl Street was once the home of a Fashion Shop who put up the metal facade. You can faintly make out the faded outlines of old neon letters running up the metal facade (pictured below). The only damage we spotted to the original building were on two skinny stone rows that had been chipped away. We had a chance to go inside this structure a while back before any restoration plans were announced. The ground level retail space is simply a large open shell, but climbing up to the upper levels was like stepping into a time machine. Fortunately for the building, it was sealed up and forgotten and every last detail from intricately carved wooden molding to the original 19th century wallpaper were still intact. There’s quite a bit of potential for this one.
A similar reveal on Fourth Street in Louisville at the site of the old Tiff’s Records and now home to the Bycks Lofts wasn’t so lucky. The original limestone face underneath a nondescript beige anti-facade was completely destroyed. A once intricate commercial building had its details chiseled away for mid-century banality. A new metal and terra-cotta tile facade was eventually installed for the loft project.
There is, however, some hope for another anti-facade on Louisville’s Fourth Street. There’s another old Fashion Shop just south of Bycks Lofts, now home to the Fashion Club store, that’s suffering from a sort of pink tile facade problem. We believe the building still has its brick and stone facade in place under the ugliness, and from what we hear there’s a beautiful four-story building under there. Unfortunately, the current owner of the property has no intentions to remove the facade or restore the building.
New Albany's old Fashion Shop before reclamation
- Bycks Lofts On Fourth Street Ready To Go (Broken Sidewalk)
Click through for a close up detail and a photo of Louisville’s own Fashion Shop anti-facade.
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