St. Louis Brick by Brick (2023)
beltmag.com
beltmag.com
They are fortunate to still have so many old buildings/houses compared to most of the rest of the Midwaste where I see the older places quickly disappearing, being torn down and replaced by modern structures.
Also, the discussion of the Indians reminded me too that just next door to St. Louis are the remnants of the Cahokia mounds, a UNESCO World Heritage site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia
(Also, couldn't help but be reminded of Settlers of Catan reading about their brick empire, ha ha.)
The brick house in St. Louis I rented previously was built in the late 1800s and has a brick walkway in the back yard that was put down at the same time, so nearly every day I was walking on bricks that had been walked on for nearly every day for more than a century.
The brick house in St. Louis my wife and I purchased a couple of years ago was likewise built in the late 1800s. If you don't know what tuckpointing[+] is, and the cost involved, you definitely will after purchasing a brick house! Thankfully, it doesn't have to be performed every decade, and you don't necessarily need to have it done to the entire exterior in one go.
But, the true meaning of tuckpointing (two-toned bands of grout to give the appearance of finer grout lines) is something I did not know about and found pretty interesting. Thank you for the comment.
One such building is this an old victorian mansion that's slowly and meticulously being restored by a local: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuteYo4Kgm1t1DqkUV33BcQ
I've visited the area a few times (and used to drive through it on the way into the city), and it's a little depressing how every time I drive through I see another couple of buildings gone.
Just last month, one of the historic church buildings (mostly brick) burned down [1], while last year another historic church building that was converted into an indoor skate park (Sk8 Liborius) also burned down [2].
The tough thing is, the developers in that area are happy to let all the buildings rot and fall over, and eventually they can sell larger plots of land to projects like the NGA, who are building a new $2 billion HQ [3]
[1] https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/crews-battle-fire-at...
[2] https://spectrumlocalnews.com/mo/st-louis/news/2023/06/29/fl...
[3] https://www.stlpr.org/economy-business/2022-12-20/ngas-nearl...
You're being awfully unfair to "developers." NGA was built on the former Pruitt-Igoe site. It was simply a demolished wasteland since 1976 and is now a functioning area with economic activity.
As for the rest of it, "developers" won't even touch these buildings, many are abandoned and worth less than free considering the tax liens.
That's not how developers work.
Developers make money by, wait for it, developing.
Developers don't "buy and wait for rot". They don't buy until they're ready to develop or the cost+carrying is almost free, which is after someone else has let the rot happen.
Developers lose money holding. They buy as late as possible because undeveloped land/buildings are another word for "cash going out the door" and the cost of said assets is money that could have been spent on buying something to develop NOW.