By Ethan Tutor
The Scene staff
St. Louis Community College officials have been talking about tearing down the A and B towers at Forest Park for more than two years, and now the time has come.
Demolition is slated for mid-March, according to Ken Kempfe, STLCC engineer and design manager.
The job will be done by Ahrens Contracting, which also has been in charge of “abatement” (preparation), with oversight by NPN Environmental Engineering. Advance Environmental Services also has been working to safely remove hazardous materials.
“We hardly ever do demolition jobs,” Kempfe said. “But we’ve got a very reliable and trustworthy company, and so far everything’s been pretty routine.”
The four-story brick towers make up about half of the east wing of the main campus building.
They’re being demolished to make way for greenspace and walkways around the new Center for Nursing and Health Sciences, a $39 million, four-story building that opened last fall. It houses college programs for nursing, dental hygiene, respiratory and other health sciences.
Towers are empty shells
Last week, Kempfe took a reporter, photographer and videographer from The Scene on a tour inside the A and B towers to show people what is being done during the abatement process.
“We’re just a bit behind schedule,” he said. “The A Tower lecture hall was more difficult to strip than expected. The towers are independent of each other, meaning that they will be stable and no pipes or wires will be left ‘dangling’ when A and B tower are gone.”
Today, buildings that once served as places of learning are empty shells. Furniture and equipment have been removed from lecture halls, classrooms and offices. Trash and debris fill hallways that students began walking through in the 1960s.
Rooms without windows are dark, and cold winter air flows through the buildings, as all utilities have been cut off. Outside, a mound of cigarette boxes next to B Tower are remnants of smoke breaks taken by construction workers.
Since November, they have been stripping the towers of hazardous materials, including asbestos, which is known to cause cancer. It can be found in roof shingles, pipes, siding, wallboard, floor tiles, joint compounds and adhesives.
“We’ll have an environmental consultant file a report to be sure that no hazardous materials are released into the atmosphere,” Kempfe said. “We have many world-class onsite consultants working with us every day.”
Project has opposition
Not everyone is happy about the towers coming down. Architectural historian Kevin Harrington spoke out against demolition when STLCC announced its plans, and he hasn’t changed his mind.
Harrington, a professor emeritus at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, is writing a book on midcentury modern architects Ben and Cynthia Weese.
Ben Weese helped his brother, Harry Weese, design the Forest Park campus in the 1960s. They collaborated with renowned landscape architect Dan Kiley, who also designed the original Gateway Arch grounds.
“(Demolition) doesn’t make sense to me,” Harrington said last week. “I thought it was a very fine building. Many taxpayer dollars were spent on the building. The creators did an incredible job with these towers. The architects respected the city and community, and their influence has been long and big.”
St. Louis opponents of the demolition include the Rev. Gregory Johnson, a historian, architecture buff and associate pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. He wrote a piece for NextSTL.com in 2018.
“The towers and landscape were designed by three greats of midcentury architecture,” he said in an interview with The Scene. “Harry Weese and Dan Kiley were some of the best architecture modernists in North America.”
Others support change
In contrast, some people on the Forest Park campus support the demolition, particularly students and faculty who have moved into the new Center for Nursing and Health Sciences.
“It’s a good investment for the future,” said criminal justice major Azaan White, 18. “The nursing program is huge here. We can’t hang on to the past. … At the end of the day, it’s just a tower, not the Arch or the Zoo.”
Office information major Markus Holt, 24, likes the idea of change on campus.
“I think it’s cool,” he said. “I feel like the school is evolving. It’s about time. I don’t think they need the old towers.”
Nursing student Daniel Boyer, 43, has mixed feelings about the demolition.
“Yes, we need progress,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s old architecture that I hate to see come down. … I don’t know if it’s worth it. I’d need to know more about the student population, cost to upkeep and many other factors that go into such a project to give a definitive answer.”
10 weeks of demolition
Ahrens will demolish the towers using excavators, a process expected to take 10 weeks.
Giant arms with a clawlike buckets will tear into the brick and work down from the top of the buildings. Ground crews will use hammers, sledgehammers and crushers to reduce big chunks to rubble.
“The regular construction waste will simply be hauled out to a landfill,” Kempfe said. “All asbestos and hazardous materials will be taken to a special biohazard waste site.”
Some people who dislike the design of the Forest Park campus have likened it to a prison. But Harrington praises it as “intelligent.”
“Once you enter the building, you instantly understand the rest of the layout of the entire complex,” he said. “Multiple social activities are encouraged through the layout of the towers. Sitting areas outside of classrooms and the positioning of vending machines and plants next to them make discussions and interactions between students before and after class more common. Even the sitting areas outside are quite comfortable.”
“(Demolishing a section of the building) doesn’t seem very wise,” Harrington added. “I’m just very sad to know that this piece of architecture that has reflected the city and people of St. Louis and their children is being destroyed after so many years.”