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ST. LOUIS — St. Augustine in north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ was once slated for new life. But after three catastrophic fires, any hope of restoring the Gothic Revival church vanished.

The fate of what can still be salvaged from the historic structure is largely in the hands of private buyers.

Kyle Lansing, a preservation specialist, last month used a construction lift to climb more than 60 feet and retrieve a 9-foot-tall section of the massive stained-glass depiction of the Adoration of the Magi on the church’s south wall.

He spent over 50 hours, working late into the night, to break apart the rose window frame designed and crafted by Emil Frei Sr., the famed glazier from Germany who made ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ his permanent home in the 1890s.

“The frame isn’t the star of the show, the glass is. The frame was in sad shape anyway,� Lansing said. “So, it was really just cutting it up into manageable pieces and strapping it into the lift and winging it on down.�

The city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ hired a demolition company to remove the wreckage. That company, also wanting to save that iconography, splurged on a rental for the construction lift, but ran out of time to get more of the windows.

“You always hear people in the community say, ‘Oh, well, that has to be saved,’� said Lansing, who co-owns Architectural Reclamation Services. “You got to understand: That stuff costs money to do that.�

Few places in the country boast architecture comparable to that of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. However, there is a shortage of individuals with the resources or inclination to maintain all of it. Preservationists have long lamented this issue as the region steadily forfeits its cultural heritage, one brick at a time.

Yet architecture has often driven demand for today’s most popular neighborhoods, from the three-story Second Empire mansions in Lafayette Square to the Craftsman and Tudor Revival homes in Shaw.

The tragedy of St. Augustine shows how hard it is to save historic buildings, especially in neighborhoods that have been ravaged by disinvestment.

“These are systemic issues and the buildings are just material evidence,� said preservationist Michael Allen.

North City forsaken

Over 125 years ago, when St. Augustine was constructed at Lismore and Hebert streets, the city’s population was nearly twice what it is today — and still growing. The church, located in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Place neighborhood, was a hub for German Catholic immigrants, accommodating thousands of congregants.

The church was an enormous structure at the time, with seating capacity of 920 (not including the gallery) and a 200-foot-tall main tower whose “magnificent proportions make it one of the prettiest in town,� at the time of its dedication in 1897.

Adding to the beauty were the stained-glass windows, including Frei’s Adoration of the Magi, a key factor in St. Augustine’s inclusion on the . Frei, who was later joined in the art glass business by his son, Emil Jr., designed and crafted some of the best-loved stained-glass and mosaic displays in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ area. The Frei family continues to that specializes in the design and restoration of custom stained glass and mosaics.

By the 1970s, as the city drained of residents, other Christian denominations used the church. Then those worshippers abandoned the church, too. It sat vacant for about six years before Brittany and Chris Gloyd bought it with plans to turn it into a community center.

The church had already been damaged by vandals, who stole copper and trashed the inside, and the roof was caving in. Repairs were estimated to cost $10 million.

The first two fires occurred in 2022; the third earlier this year. In late March, the city ordered it to be demolished. The Gloyds, before turning ownership over to the city’s landbank, had said that time outpaced their fundraising efforts.

“We’ve had significant trouble convincing major donors to contribute, often cited to the historic lack of involvement and support from local government officials and agencies for northside projects and revitalization efforts such as ours,� Brittany Gloyd .

Preservationists don’t disagree.

“It does seem like that the collective mass has given up on the future of certain parts of North City altogether,� Allen said.

And it’s not just the iconic churches that anchor neighborhoods, he said. The James L. Clemens House on Cass Avenue in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Place and the Mullanphy Emigrant Home in Old North both fell to catastrophic fires in recent years.

Northside neighborhoods have accounted for 16% of the 26,000 building permits the city has issued since 2019 — but they make up the majority of demolition permits: nearly three-fourths of the 3,000 issued over the same period, according to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ data.

Andrew Weil, who leads the nonprofit preservation group Landmarks Association of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, blames the “broken real estate marketâ€� in north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, where the cost of renovating or building a structure easily exceeds its potential sales price. The city’s continuing population decline also doesn’t help.

“At the end of the day, these buildings need a purpose. They’re not just artifacts. They’re not just museum pieces under glass. They have to have people,� Weil said. “In the absence of a purpose, in the absence of an investment, then the unfortunate reality is they disappear.�

But there’s a silver lining, he said. Decades ago, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ leaders planned to raze big chunks of the city. They succeeded in some parts. But the neighborhoods that escaped demolition, like Lafayette Square, Soulard and Tower Grove, are some of the most in-demand areas today.

“If you know anything about the history of redevelopment in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, neighborhoods do come back,â€� Weil said.

Salvation at last?

Atop the construction lift at St. Augustine, Lansing, 39, could see his high school, the former Central High School on Natural Bridge. It’s where his interest in urban exploring bloomed. It was all about the thrill of going into a place that hadn’t had people in it for years, he said.

“ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ has a lot of abandoned buildings,â€� Lansing said, “and you know, we were hungry for excitement.â€�

He met Allen, the preservationist, on the roof of the Armour & Co. Meatpacking Plant near East ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ when Lansing was a teenager. They’ve stayed friends over the years.

“I think a lot of the impetus to explore is to have some kind of personal connection to history,� Allen said. “People like Kyle, his urban exploring path led him into a career where he gets to do preservation work, at least a form of preservation.�

Before starting his own company, Architectural Reclamation Services, Lansing worked for Refab, a southside-based organization that reclaims building materials and artifacts. Lansing worked on the Pulitzer mansion in west ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, the Culver House that was razed for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra expansion and Hyde Park’s Bethlehem Lutheran Church, another lost landmark that Lansing had wanted to explore when he was a teenager.

He always salvages what he knows will sell: brick, lumber, stone. Other adornments come down, too, though he doesn’t always have a ready buyer.

“I’ve got a terra cotta façade for a building we did over in Staunton, it’s all cleaned and ready to go,� Lansing said. “But what somebody’s gonna do with it? I don’t know. … I’m not a good marketing guy. I’m good at taking it down. I’m not a good salesman.�

He’ll sometimes work with the National Building Arts Center, which Allen now operates, to find buyers.

There’s an appetite for these architectural artifacts, especially around disaster, he said.

Lansing was at his office at the Lemp Brewery when a building collapsed in 2020. Looky-loos came out of the woodwork looking for their own brick from history.

“People love catastrophe,� he said.

Back at St. Augustine, Lansing is hoping to recover more of the stained glass. Someone had smashed part of it already. Time, he knows, is running out.

The construction lift he used to take down the 500-pound rose in late April was a rental, paid for by the owner of the demolition company. Lansing, whose company is in its infancy, doesn’t have the roughly $2,500 to rent it again.

But then last week a private buyer stepped forward. Lansing spent the weekend chipping away at the frame that shelters what’s left.