Thursday, March 27, 2008

Preservationists and urbanists rally to save CWE building

The San Luis Apartments, located just west of the New Cathedral on Lindell, is slated for demolition by its owner, the Archdiocese of St. Louis. Concerned St. Louisans are working to prevent the demolition and preserve the building.

Meanwhile, reports around the blogosphere are that the Archdiocese plans to replace the building with a surface parking lot. The Archdiocese has a major presence in the city's Central West End. The timeframe for the proposed demolition is unclear. Whether the San Luis Apartments has any remaining residents is also unclear.

The story has been well covered in the blogs, however, there has been minimal if any mention of this plan in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It has been hard to find information presenting the Archdiocese' side of the story.

Ultimately, the building may come down. There will be those in favor of the demolition and those opposed. The built environment, especially in an old city like St. Louis, presents us with many choices, and there are wide differences of opinion on how to do things.

It will be interesting to see how the Archdiocese responds if there is a strong grass roots movement emanating from the community to preserve the building.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a meeting on this issue Saturday morning at 9:00 AM at the Schlafly branch library in the Central West End.

Does anyone know if a representative for the Archdiocese will be attending?

Anonymous said...

Any word from the meeting on Saturday?

Anonymous said...

If you will vistit the Vanishing STL and Pub Def blogs, you can see the follow-up discussion to the meeting.