Building "Up" in Saint Louis City
Seeing signs of a city that is "maturing" is very exciting to me. A recent post on the Rehabbers Club list-serv pointed out this adaptive reuse of a single-story flat-roof bungalow in the Tower Grove Heights neighborhood.
A good friend of mine, one who always has great visionery ideas, once proposed to me this idea of taking a 1-story flat roof bungalow and adding on top of it. In my somtimes overly-conservative ways, I shrugged it off as "nope - not doable. Not gonna happen." And then this photo surfaces and proves me wrong--and boy am I glad it did!
I think this is wonderful. While the TGH neighborhood doesn't have particularly large numbers (if any) of the mansard-style 2-story homes, I think it's a great new addition that truly pays homage to the architectural history and make-up of the surrounding area, while keeping and re-using ina modern way the century-old structure that perahps was a bit unusable, being a 3-room, 1 bed/1 bath shot-gun style home. I'm anxious to see them continue and see what materials they use to finish out the space.