Northside I
Paul McKee is a St. Louis native and works as a developer. His past projects include the mixed used residential/ office parks such as Winghaven and a 51 acre industrial park in Hazelwood. For his latest project, McKee has turned his sights towards downtown and is aiming to transform 1,500 acres of the city in his 8.1 billion Northside Redevelopment.
McKee has been working on the project for roughly ten years, but it has only been publicly known as Northside for the past four years. Before then, McKee bought up houses as shell companies and let them fall apart to lower property values of neighboring houses in order to make it easier to buy up entire blocks. This dishonest approach earned him few fans and his plan has left many residents angry.
Neffziger weighs in with another piece below.
As the pictures on the previous page showed, St. Louis Place shares many architectural characteristics with Lafayette Square, its neighbor a few miles to the South. Instead of McKee lovingly restoring these, he allows them to fall apart and he hopes to start over with a blank slate.
North St. Louis has too many beautiful, historic buildings for this to happen to. A few will be explored below.
Bethlehem Lutheran
Demolished
The beautiful and imposing Bethlehem Lutheran Church stood tall in North St. Louis for over 100 years. In the 1990's though, the congregation had shrunk to the point that heating and cooling the massive building was unpractical. The power was switched off and 20 years of neglect resulted in the back half of the church collaspsing in the winter of 2013. The rest of the church had to be demolished shortly thereafter.
Carr School
In Severe Disrepair
The Carr School is one of the roughly 50 schools in the St. Louis area designed by famous school architect William B Ittner. The property has been abandoned for decades and is suffering from multiple roof collapses and severe water damage.
Clemens Mansion
In Severe Disrepair
The Clemens Mansion dates back to the 1850's and is one of the most historic houses in the city with the original owner being Mark Twain's uncle. The main mansion has a chapel next to it that was built in 1896. McKee bought the property as a shell company well over five years ago and has published renderings of the renovations (right). While it's a pretty picture, there has been virtually no positive change to the house. In the intervening years, the chapel roof has collapsed and the interior is going further downhill.
Pictures of the house's current state are below.
The three buildings looked at above are some of the most famous or notable buildings in the fabric of North St. Louis. They are clearly not being maintained or cared for and that's a problem. Since the premier landmarks of the Northside are crumbling, it's only logical that the everyday, normal houses are as well. Neglect, brick theft, arson, scrapping and weather damage are all taking their toll on Northside residences.
St. Louis based activist and rapper Prince Ea made a heartfelt and sincere spoken word video entitled Why I Think the World Should End in North St. Louis. The scene of the video is a house in ruins after brick theft and arson. This house was standing and totally fine in 2009, but the owner of the house is McKee Northside LLC and years of neglect left the house in ruins. Prince Ea's video is below along with before and after pictures of the house.
