With news of a proposed ~$670M mixed use high rise at 200 South 4th Street including 1.3 million square feet of residential, office, commercial, cultural, and public spaces, I knew it was time to visit the site of the old, um, Stouffer’s Riverfront Inn, Regal Riverfront, Clarion or Millennium Hotel…we’ll stick to the modern parlance, which would be demolished should the redevelopment plans gather steam.
The proposal cites upscale residential, Class A office space, public spaces, an amphitheater, food hall, event space, potential home for Gateway Arch National Park’s archives, enhanced streetscapes, pedestrian-friendly spaces, landscaping, and art installations as the sales pitch for demo, likely tax credits and press release buzz.
I, like most in the pro-St. Louis community, was jazzed about this proposal. I don’t see it as a silver bullet, rather a higher use for a complicated block in the Downtown Neighborhood of St. Louis. It will also be a nice bridge of investment north of the even more impactful ideas proposed for Chouteau’s Landing south of the Interstates called Gateway South.
So with potential demolition, it was high time to get some photos of the cylindrical 1960s monuments should any demolition occur.
A walk around the site was quite revealing of just how badly isolated these properties were.
The Mid-Century design of a “complex” surrounded by other death knells of old cities: the Interstate highways, it just wasn’t built to stand the test of time.
The hotel was completed in 1968, with a revolving restaurant on the top floor. It sat vacant since 2014, yielding a mere 46 years of service…then off to the landfill.
I’m always think about my 30 year mortgage on a 117 year old home. I got financed for a house that is built like a brick house (ha) and it will be around as long as a tornado or other act of God takes it.
This mid-Century complex just wasn’t built to last. In the 1960s, St. Louis was all about modernism of the times. Cars and Interstates were the future and the architecture and site planning would reflect it. The parking garages that flank the Millenium site to the west are brutal reminders of this lust for visitor’s cars. The garages are hideous, dead spaces that serve visitors at a cost to the residents of Downtown or St. Louis citizens in general. The garages are a physical barrier to a good human experience between the Arch and Busch Stadium and Ballpark Village.
Mid-Century style is cool as hell and something I personally love, inside my house. Mid-Century architecture? The ideas those architects had seemed perfect for the sprawl of post-WWII American ideals. But when they muscled into old cities’ rectilinear grids, it just wasn’t meant to last and they obliterated pedestrian access and adjacent property connections.
Mid-Century architecture should not be discredited, it is beautiful and striking. It works in the suburbs of St. Louis County very well, for instance. It can serve as a monument of the times and appropriate for some sections of our city.
But, St. Louis fell hook, line and sinker for the silver bullets of the time…massive, block long, isolated campuses with the newest architecture of the time. But, they failed our street grid, our history and of course, the test of time.
Mid-Century architecture, like Brutalist architecture is interesting for its time. And it works in suburbs that were built solely for automobile culture; but St. Louis, an old city, keeps chewing it up and spitting it out to the landfill that mourns its failed attempts.
PET Building, now Pointe 400 - Completed in 1969
But don’t worry, if you are a fan of the 1960’s architectural styles, the former Pet Building will remain, as it was converted to apartments.
I like these buildings, they are bold landmarks in their own right. However, they don’t match the buildings from the Art Deco and prior eras we have Downtown.
I’m sick of the resources and environmental demands of new construction failing after their mortgage is up. They should last longer than 50 years.
Busch Stadium II was heralded as an architectural feat, a multi-functional solution to entertainment. It lasted a mere 39 years, just after a normal homebuyer would get it paid off.
It wasn’t cherished. It’s not just St. Louis that devalued the 1960s stadiums, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other cities rejected these as well for something new. I doubt the new ones will last much longer due to either value-engineered materials and designs or professional sports owners’ lust for profit over historical significance.
Back to the Millennium…this isn’t the first time I’ve written about the Downtown skyline, from a 2018 post:
“We should respect the stamp of Modernism that remains Downtown. I hope an investor sees the potential in the Millenium and the other mid-century structures remain. If we focused on the sea of surface parking in our downtown, targeting professional jobs and residents, all of a sudden we’d have a good, vibrant mix of architectural styles. St. Louis should cherish it’s Modernist contributions downtown, they shouldn’t be torn down, a la Busch Stadium-II, even if they did nothing to revive St. Louis as a city or even downtown.
Back in the 1960’s, George McCue, an art and urban design critic at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said about the Mansion Towers:
“Visible from points to the west, [the towers] would beckon visitors, with their bold forms by day and their lighted windows at night, to an area of revived human activities.” (source)
He’s right, only people can revive a city. But, sadly the Modernist buildings did nothing to stop the great suburban run of the times. But, these buildings are handsome. Some of them are mixed-use. They fit in with contemporary glass and steel construction.
I like them. We just need 10,000 more people willing to call St. Louis home. We just need some businesses that want to be part of St. Louis, not a far-flung suburban “campus”.
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So what does the Millennium look like 11 years after it was fully abandoned by out of town “investors”?
The 10-story building, erected after the main tower is still quite handsome and is connected by a single story connector.
The main tower looks quite of its time right down to the colors, including the 1990’s teal branding. It is what it is.
The place looks as tired and as ill cared for as you’d expect.
The true issue is the isolated nature of the properties. Just look at the concrete walls that abut the sidewalk. The brutal nature of Memorial Drive and I-44 destroy connectivity to the Arch grounds. Ever wonder why we St. Louisan’s don’t have a connection to the Mississippi River? It’s the Interstate barriers. It is a critical problem St. Louis has to overcome, from I-55 butchering the South City neighborhoods to I-70 cutting North City to I-44 and I-64 carving up the Central Corridor and near Southside. Ouch, what were they thinking? It was likely “f those old houses and poor people, everyone who’s anybody is moving to the burbs in St. Louis County!”
My walk along Memorial Drive was so lonely and desolate, no cars, no people…just vacate it and get people to the south section of the Arch via 4th Street and Walnut.
Take the walk along here, do you agree the Mid-20th Century damage is still clearly evident today. But is it insurmountable in the 21st Century?
Cap the Interstate, get rid of Memorial Drive. That would be the only “game changer” of the redevelopment. That and new corporate presence (not a musical chairs for an already existing STL City business, and new residents of course).
Get rid of the parking garages to the west and connect the space to Cardinal baseball!
Anyhow, glad I got these pictures and shared them for others to reference. Who knows, maybe this will all be demo’d in the near future.
