How a Jamestown Mall Sculpture Was Saved from the Wrecking Ball

All hell broke loose in the north county mall's final days. But all was not lost

Nov 22, 2023 at 9:16 am

JEFF RYALS

The concrete “swirl” sculpture was defaced and nearly destroyed — but some people were determined to save it.

After writer Shannon Howard's recent report on the secrets of Jamestown Mall, she found herself wondering about one last secret: What happened to the sculptures that once had a home there? Here's what she learned.

In the final dying years of Jamestown Mall, after many of the national retailers had left and a string of new owners and managers struggled to keep it afloat — or even keep the heat on and the mortgage paid — the mall entered what I would call its "Wild West" phase.

The roof was leaking, maintenance was overdue and the entire south wing was literally walled off from the public. Desperate to generate income, management offered cheap rent to anyone who could pay, and for a short while a number of mom-and-pop businesses did keep the mall going. But the days were numbered, and the doors officially closed in 2014. Sort of.

I say that because the mall was never actually vacant after that. For several years, it had a tenant/caretaker — Rick Cheney of the Really Cool Stuff Shop — who told me that he pretty much stayed there round the clock, armed with a shotgun and ever vigilant about keeping intruders at bay. There were also people still renting storefronts as storage units, and five separate owners of the various mall buildings, which meant a lot of folks walking around with keys to a shuttered and now very vulnerable property.

So, yes, doors got unlocked and items of value disappeared. And then at a certain point, around 2018, all hell just broke loose inside Jamestown Mall and it didn't matter who had a key or not.

Hundreds of looters, vandals and "urban explorers" repeatedly found their way inside — stealing, breaking, shooting, burning, spray-painting and destroying nearly everything in sight. Some tried squatting there. Some rode motorcycles and four-wheelers up and down the corridors. Others wanted to take photos and video in what had become known online as the "creepiest" and "most dangerous" mall in America. One young woman even got trapped in a windowless back room for eight hours and had to be rescued!

It was slightly before this era of pure chaos, in 2017, that Cheney contacted multiple local arts organizations to try to save the mall's three metal sculptures by noted Cleveland-based artist Clarence Van Duzer. Nobody was interested. And because this was the Wild West, with out-of-state owners who didn't care and pieces of the mall walking away fairly regularly, he finally arranged for them to be sold to Kelvin Baucom of Baucom's funeral home, who at the time owned one of the mall outbuildings and planned to give the sculptures a second chance.

Today, you can drive by Baucom's funeral home at 9480 Lewis and Clark Boulevard in Jennings and see the steel sculpture from the mall's north wing reinstalled on the front lawn. It's alive! On a recent visit to the site, I also spotted the south wing sculpture there, sitting in two pieces behind the building. I've been told that it will be installed soon as well, and that the large copper sculpture from center court will go up at Baucom's second funeral home, which is slated to open at 4189 Veterans Memorial Parkway in St. Peters.

(As a side note, you can see the Van Duzer sculpture "Century," which was originally at the center court of Chesterfield Mall, prominently displayed in two pieces outside the Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur.)

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TOBY WEISS, BELTSTL.COM

The concrete "swirl" sculpture during Jamestown Mall's heyday.

But my favorite sculpture at Jamestown Mall was the concrete "swirl" that stood in front of Dillard's, and I'm thrilled to report that it was saved as well.

My friend Jeff Ryals made a last-minute effort to rescue it before demolition started this fall, contacting the St. Louis County Port Authority, which is the mall's current owner, and eventually the manager of the demolition site. With help from Michael Allen at the National Buildings Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois, he scrambled to get a heavy equipment crew and take a first-hand look at the sculpture before the dozers started moving in.

It was bigger than expected — around 13 feet tall — and more damaged than expected, though fixable. But Ryals had wanted to install it in his yard and had concerns that its stucco coating would just deteriorate outside and get ruined. So he wrestled over the decision but sadly determined that he just couldn't take it.

In the meantime, demolition manager Dan Liverance was walking by the sculpture multiple times a day. A site superintendent for Target Contractors LLC, he has worked in the demo business for 40 years and has pretty much seen it all, including many of the worst and craziest days at "dead" Jamestown Mall.

And for some reason, he just felt strongly that the sculpture needed to be saved.

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JEFF RYALS

Despite its condition, Jeff Ryals felt the sculpture ought to be saved.

"Everything has been stolen here. There's nothing of value left, nothing that hasn't been vandalized and ruined. And yet through all of this, the sculpture's been sitting here the entire time," he says. "It's been spray-painted, set on fire, gotten wet ... and I just kept looking at it, thinking ... why is it still here? Why is it the only thing that survived?"

So with permission from his company's owner and many "what the...?" looks from his own crew, Liverance and several guys spent hours carefully extricating the sculpture and its extremely heavy base, eventually moving them across the parking lot to the front of the former bank building, now the demolition office, where the sculpture now sits.

Its next home is unsure for now, but some, including Liverance, would like to see it stay on the mall site as a monument. He feels this "final survivor" may be a symbol for the strength and resilience of all the people who loved and nurtured Jamestown Mall over the years, like longtime nearby resident Mary Lou Walsh, who had tears in her eyes when he showed her that the sculpture had been preserved.

"I think it may be guarding this place," Liverance says. "I'm not usually that kind of person, but there's just something about it. It almost makes my hair stand up when I think what it's been through."

He added, "Even more eerie, ever since we pulled the sculpture out, we haven't had one single police incident ... at a place that's had almost daily incidents for years. So I just have to wonder. Something about it seems kind of magical."