Built St. Louis: Vanished Buildings
The Page Avenue Police Station

It was closed in the nineteen-sixties, re-opened for several years, and finally abandoned for good by the early seventies as the neighborhood around it lost both population and affluence. Several organizations tried to take it over, as a civic center or some such, without sucess. It suffered a fire in 1995, which destroyed the cupola and collapsed the roof.

When I first saw it in 1996, it was seemingly in rotting condition -- but it was still truly grand. Though I initially believed that it was beyond any hope of restoration, a architectural salvager I met commented that it was still "solid as a rock"; a rehabber I encountered later on claimed that a new roof was all it really needed to be viable again. He even had a rather innovative plan for reviving it, but simply lacked the time and the capital to get it started -- and by then it was too late anyway.

The Page Police Station was demolished in February of 1997, perhaps as a token measure to show that the mayor up for re-election at the time was making "progress" in "revitalizing" the city, or perhaps even because it was something of a danger to the neighborhood in its dilapitated state.

Today the lot has been landscaped as a corner park, with some benches and what looks like a small community garden. The sign in the center reads "Arie W. Fowler Park".

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