Spivey Building in East St. Louis may be doomed

Residents are running out of patience with the historic but long-abandoned Spivey Building of East St. Louis — the tallest skyscraper in the metro-east — and it seems demolition will come sooner than later.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch filed a report last week about failed attempts to rehabilitate the 12-story skyscraper and how bricks and pieces of brick and facade fall from the decaying building during rainy or windy days.

The newspaper posted a short video of pieces of the Spivey Building falling on the sidewalk.

The newspaper reported:

“Tear it down, or someone is going to end up getting hurt,” said the Rev. Johnny Scott, who owns an accounting firm next door to the Spivey. […]

Bill Mixon, who owns an insurance agency in the same building with Scott, said he twice has gone to court to sue for damages when bricks fell off the Spivey and onto cars in his parking lot.
“I understand it’s the tallest building in East St. Louis, in the Metro East even,” Mixon said. “But aside from being tall, it really has no other historical significance.”

The National Register of Historic Places disagrees with Mixon. It placed the Spivey Building on the register in 2002. The structure at 401 Missouri Ave. was built in 1927, named after Allen Spivey, owner of the East St. Louis Journal. The Riverfront Times in 2014 published an extensive history of the building.

It sits on a 1929-1937 alignment of Route 66. The 1933-1961 alignment of Route 66 runs just a few blocks away.

The building’s last tenant moved out in 1980, and the Spivey has been abandoned since.

Tattoo Tony Alton explored the building in 2017.

St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern said he’s talking to East St. Louis officials about  demolishing it. That action prompted the Landmarks Association of St. Louis to place the Spivey Building on the “critically endangered” list.

One would-be developer of the building, Philip Cohn, and a local contractor wound up in prison in 2002 when they illegally removed asbestos from the building. They broke federal environmental laws by tossing asbestos out of the building’s windows and on Missouri Avenue below.

Downtown East St. Louis contains a few other notable historic buildings, including the long-abandoned Majestic Theatre. East St. Louis, once the fourth-largest city in Illinois, fell from a population of 82,000 in the 1950s to 27,000 and falling because of a toxic stew of industry abandonment, debt, white flight, crime, corruption and freeways that destroyed neighborhoods. A good overview about East. St. Louis’ history may be found in Andrew Theising’s book “Made in USA: East St. Louis.”

This recent documentary about East St. Louis also is illuminating:

(Images of the Spivey Building in East St. Louis, Illinois, by straightedge271 and Paul Sableman via Flickr)

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