The Taj Mahal in India, from whom this design is stolen, was built as a labor
of love (or love lost).
It was built as a mausoleum for the Mughal Emperor's favorite
wife.
It was completed in 1653, three hundred years exactly before the birth of
the current builder.
This modern version, as well, is a labor of love though without
the morbid side.
This building, though not a portal to heaven like its inspiration, is nonetheless
somewhat divinely inspired.
There are NO plans, NO drawings, NO blueprints, NO
surveying transits.
As a nod to Dean's training as a mathematician, an analog
tape measure with numbers was used.
If the god(s) are assisting him, they certainly
are reserved with the spigot.
Perhaps this compels Dean to try harder. Or makes
him more grateful.
All the components for this building have come in nearly the
correct amounts.
So much stone, so many I-beams, so many timbers, so many windows.
The
waste from the total of this job would not even fill half a dump truck. So far about
ten garbage cans.
And components come only at the last minute and as needed and
not what Dean thought he needed or wanted.
The I-beams came after the columns
were up. The roof beams came after the I-beams were up.
The wooden beams came
after the roof beams were up. The windows came after the wooden beams were up.
The
stainless steel came after the windows were in (sort of).
The current builder (Dean) felt that if he would build a castle, a princess
would come.
This has turned out to not be the case, as two would-be princesses
have bailed out.
Prospective princesses studiously avoid the premises likely because
it smacks of incredibly hard work (kids these days).
So now this incredible structure,
which has been built by the sheer determination of one man, is vacant.
It is still
a work in progress, but is inhabited only by rare snow leopards (okay- polydactyl
tortoise-shell cats).
The story begins in January 1982 when the current builder was wintering in
Jamaica and he received a telegram from his friend, Don Bellon.
Don Bellon, owns
Bellon Wrecking Comapny of St. Louis and Dean had demolished numerous large structures
for him in previous years.
Dean had a reputation that he could drop a hundred
foot tall building within a hundred foot circle.
He would do this without explosives,
but with a piece of crane cable woven in and out of openings.
He would then back
off some distance with a very large Caterpillar (977L) and draw the cable tight like
a purse string.
Don requested that Dean interupt his endeavors in Jamaica and fly up to look
at a building at 8th and Washington in St. Louis.
Dean flew up, went to the address
and found Amitin's Book Store which he had frequented in his youth for antiquarian
books.
He was rather irritated that Don would have him fly up to wreck a three-storey
building.
He called Don and Don asked "Could he hand-wreck it?"
"Obviously,"
Dean answered getting a bit perturbed.
Don replied "Put an eight foot chain
link fence around the entire block."
Dean looked across the street from Amitin's
and there was this magnificent ten-storey stone building.
"Oh." (That's
what he wants wrecked. By hand.)
It was the old Pope's Cafeteria. Dean had eaten
there as a child.
The original building on this site was built of Minnesota red sandstone in
1889 in a sort of Sullivanesque carved motif.
It burned that same year. All the
stone was salvaged and reversed and sculpted with a feather-cut texture and re-erected
in 1890.
Ninety-two years later, Dean and his crew of eighty-three men reduced
it to a series of truckloads of brick, timber, iron pipe and stone in the space of
two hundred days.
This property was owned by Sorkis Webbe and he wanted it demolished to make
parking for the Mayfair Hotel which he owned.
The building was snug up against
the Antlers Hotel which was to remain and across the street from the all glass Mercantile
Bank Building.
Hence no explosives or headache balls- only hand wreck.
At the
end of the wrecking job, there were over a hundred pallets of huge slabs of Minnesota
red sandstone.
Dean had taken special pains to remove all of this intact and had
implored Don Bellon to allow him to keep it as his share of the salvage.
At that
point, Sorkis Webbe informed Dean that he wanted the stone.
Webbe was the head
of the Lebanese organization in town (not the Boy Scouts mind you).
His wife was
the sister of the head of the Italian mob in St. Louis.
Dean made a very expedient
choice and tendered it to Mr. Webbe.
Mr. Webbe ended up stiffing Don and Dean
for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the demolition.
At this point, Dean repossessed
his stone with the assistance of Century Brick Company and stored it at their yard
on Broadway.
In October of 1984, Dean bought his current farm in southern Illinois.
In
January of 1985, with his old 1973 El Camino and his puppy, Katie, Dean moved the
stone one slab at a time, by hand.
He slid it up a ramp onto his El Camino in
the snow and slid it off at the farm and re-palletized it.
It took two months
that winter to move one hundred plus tons of stone- by hand.
The story then shifts to 2003.
In between then, Dean had an industrial courier
business in Jamaica, and then started a similar operation in Russia.
There he
became a Commercial Liaison to the Russian Academy of Sciences.
One of his clients
was the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
They had
no money, but in return for Dean's services, they offered him the right to exhibit
the Russian Dinosaur Show in America.
A friend of Dean's since the 70's in old
Soulard/Lafayette Square days was Bob Cassilly.
Bob had this idea for a children's
museum downtown in a building he and Bruce Gerrie had bought.
Dean asked him if
he wanted the dinosaurs for his grand opening?
Bob asked Dean if he's like to
be a co-founder and builder of City Museum?
Sadly, Bob is deceased and City Museum
is in the hands of a billionaire miniature golfcourse developer.
Sigh.
In 2003,
Dean broke ground for the re-erection of his dream building.
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