Two Times the House, in Hopes of Sparking Dialogue in St. Louis
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Version 0 of 1. On July 29, a blighted and abandoned house in St. Louis will briefly stand in two locations at once. Only the brick shell of the 1890 home at 4562 Enright Avenue will remain in its underserved neighborhood one block north of Delmar Boulevard — which is known to its residents as the Delmar Divide, a stark racial and socioeconomic dividing line that runs through the city. Two blocks south of Delmar, inside the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, members of the Berlin-based architecture collective raumlaborberlin will assemble a skeleton of the house from its salvaged beams, doorways, window frames and staircases for an installation that they hope will inspire public discussions about why such homes were abandoned and what possibilities there are for their future renewal. The installation will remain through October. The Foundation brought together the German designers — their first museum commission in the United States — in partnership with the City of St. Louis and the Enright Avenue neighborhood to identify a house that local residents wanted demolished, and to imagine creative uses for the site once it was cleaned up, including a playground or garden. The abandoned house will be torn down after July 30. The exhibition at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation will include video interviews that members of the raumlaborberlin collective conducted with St. Louis residents about the economic and social forces contributing to such contemporary ruins. “It’s a microcosm that exists across all American cities,” said Cara Starke, the Foundation’s director, who is interested in how her institution can directly serve local needs. The proceeds from the sale of the wood and bricks from the original house are to be reinvested into landscaping and youth programming in the Enright Avenue community. “So many stakeholders have come together to create shared goals,” Ms. Starke said. “We’ll see how this persists past the project.” |