What Should Be: the St. Louis Flounder

Anyone who has explored the neighborhoods of St. Louis knows that its urban fabric contains immense charm, largely due to a proliferation of high quality historic buildings and interspersed mid-century modern structures. These historic structures help present St. Louis as a world-class city, and are an undeniably vital part of the narrative of the city. This fragile and nearly irreplaceable historic fabric, with very few exceptions, should be preserved however possible.

In many of our historic neighborhoods, this preservation has been accomplished, in part, through historic district designations and their associated historic standards. While the standards have often been successful at restoring and preserving existing construction within neighborhoods, they have largely been unable to create worthy replacement of the lost portions of historic fabric. The fundamental flaw in the process is the requirement that new construction adheres to historic standards. While noble in intention, this practice often results in the proverbial mullet houses or snout houses, and usually bearing little historical accuracy. Creating replica versions of historic neighborhoods ultimately doesn’t honor them, but instead it detracts from them. Worse yet, it cheapens them. World-class historic buildings deserve adjacent infill that is respectful enough to be original.