Three post office renovations deliver three very different preservation messages.

Story by Robert Bittner / May 28, 2004

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The Old Post Office Building in St. Louis (City of St. Louis)

Six years ago, the city of St. Louis, Missouri, was told a special delivery was on the way: the Old Post Office, a 242,000 square-foot building built in 1884 and recently abandoned, was scheduled to be renovated into the new downtown home for Webster University and the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Neighborhood resident and small-business owner Margie Newman was hopeful. "I was really thrilled to hear that plans were in place. I still think that restoring the Old Post Office is a great idea."

What Newman, the nonprofit Landmarks Association, and other preservation-minded St. Louisans had not anticipated, however, was how the project would expand to include the demolition of the nearby Century Building for the sake of a parking garage.

For years, the 108-year-old Century Building has been on the local list of endangered historic landmarks. Now, it appears destined for destruction. The irony for local activists like Newman is that additional parking appears to be unnecessary. Webster University has scaled back its original occupancy plan, signing a lease in early May for 32,502 square feet instead of the original 53,000. In addition, the majority of Webster's students, as well as those working in the Court of Appeals, will be moving from existing buildings just a few blocks away.

The furor over the Century Building has fragmented local preservationists and drawn attention away from the post office itself. Yet the building seems worth discussing. Designed by U.S. government architect Alfred Mullet and built between 1875 and 1884, the brick and cast-iron building fills a city block and is a worthy example of Second Empire-style architecture. A mansard roof, extensive detailing, and sculptures by Daniel Chester French help to make it, in Newman's words, "an incredible building."

She is appalled that local leaders and developers have decided that saving the post office will lead to the destruction of another piece of the city's history. "In the next decade or two," she believes, "people are going to choose St. Louis because of the character of this place. If we keep sacrificing buildings, we're going to be sorry. I think we are destroying our strongest competitive asset."

The situation could not have been more different in Nashville, Tennessee. For decades, the 1934 downtown post office building served as the city's main mail hub. But when the majority of mail handling was relocated during the mid-1980s, the site became a branch post office, leaving much of the building empty.

In the early 1990s, a citywide visioning program called "Nashville's Agenda" encouraged public discussion about the city's future. One expressed need was for a major place to see art. The old post office, with its prime location in the city center, became an obvious choice.

The Frist Center (Timothey Hursley)

The result was a public/private partnership spearheaded by Dr. Thomas F. Frist, Jr., and the charitable Frist Foundation. The Foundation worked with the U.S. Postal Service, the City of Nashville, and the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) to acquire the building and surrounding land as the new home of what would become the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Designed by Marr and Holman Architects, the building's exterior is Classic Moderne, a style popular among public buildings of the early 1930s. One major challenge during the renovation was to preserve the building's Art Deco interior while bringing the facilities up to contemporary standards for displaying art.

"It was largely architect Seab Tuck's responsibility to make absolutely sure the renovation of the building was done properly," says Ellen Jones Pryor, the Frist's director of communications. In her opinion, he exceeded expectations.

"The physical transformation was absolutely astounding. There was not a detail that was too small or too insignificant. Things like the floors. They were boards cut on end, as many floors were in that period of time. The floors were all taken up and stored during the renovation and then put back down. Everything that could be reused in the building was put back into the building. I was stunned as I watched this process and marveled at Seab Tuck's ingenuity and the real care he took with the building."

As a result, "The Frist Center has become a kind of cultural jewel for this city," Pryor notes.

An even larger—and ultimately more complex—renovation was in store for the General Post Office Building in downtown Washington, D.C.

Built in several stages, from 1839 to 1866, the Federal-style structure was designed primarily by Robert Mills and Thomas Walter. It was the first all-marble building in Washington and is said to be the birthplace of the Pony Express. In 1921, it became home to the Tariff Commission and, ever since, has been known as the Tariff Building. It received National Historic Landmark status in 1971.

The Hotel Monaco (David Phelps Photography)

The building was vacated in 1988 and fell into disrepair. After a decade of decline, the Kimpton Group, a San Francisco-based hotel management and development company, stepped in. From 1999 until June 2002, the Tariff Building was transformed into the 184-room Hotel Monaco, a project overseen by San Francisco architect Michael Stanton and Washington, D.C.-based Oerhlein & Associates Architects and Heritage Consulting.

Mike DeFrino, now Kimpton's vice president of hotel operations for the East Coast, was the Hotel Monaco's original general manager. "I acted somewhat as an intermediary between the construction and design people and the operations," he says. "In some buildings, that's quite an easy task. You have a blank floor plate. You just say, ‘I want this plug here and that plug there, and I need cabinets here and elevators here.' In this hotel, with its landmark status and the restrictions that were put on the amount of deconstruction that could take place inside, it was exponentially more complicated than even the typical historical renovation.

"All the walls had to stay where they were; all the floors had to stay where they were. The ceilings couldn't be touched or altered. So work within those parameters is naturally more complicated.

"The flip side is that the product our customers now get to enjoy is much more authentic than many other landmark renovations. When you walk in, you are surrounded—right down to your bedroom—with the original walls, the original mullions around the doors, the original groin-vaulted ceilings, the two-foot marble thresholds at the door—all of it authentic."

Restoration has also taken hold of the neighborhood surrounding the Hotel Monaco. "This area of town used to be a real blight," DeFrino admits. Yet, today, the restored Hotel Monaco sits across the street from the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, housed in the old Patent Office and currently in the midst of its own renovation, and an original Hecht's Department Store, another all-marble building that has been completely revamped.

"There's also a great deal of new construction," he says. "But the fact that we have these historical landmarks as an anchor, as a ballast, for this high-flying neighborhood adds a great deal of texture to this part of town."

At the heart of these post office restorations seems to be an understanding of the added texture and cultural richness that comes when cities find new uses for old buildings. To DeFrino, "The value these iconic buildings can offer is maybe a little bit intangible at first. But if one of them was knocked down and a new building went up there, it would reduce the flavor of this whole area."

Robert Bittner is a freelance journalist living in Michigan.

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