Built under the South Kingshighway Viaduct, a newly demolished elevated roadway that once divided the neighborhood, a community of skaters constructed a skatepark.
By Deven Wilson
Embers from a fire catch on the wind in the night. Hurrying over to the closet roof to spread their flames, rapidly growing into a roar that lights up the night as firefighters work to put it out. Soon enough, the morning light shines harshly over the devastation and destruction. The hours of the day endlessly stretch out as the daunting task of recovery and rebuilding looms on the horizon in St. Louis. The fire that’s placed the game-changing Sk8 Liborius group into a predicament to decide how to move forward in fostering a sanctuary for skating shares a twisting lineage to a fire 174 years and a month prior. The steamboat White Cloud spread its fire in 1889, taking several blocks of the then-booming city into ashes. Resulting in a city faced with the same daunting task of rising out of the ruins with resiliency that Sk8 Liborius now must forge ahead from.
Sk8 Liborius was born roughly eleven years prior after the LLC owning the property of the Saint Liborius Church and adjacent buildings were sold over to a couple ambitious locals. Bryan Bedwell, a pillar of the concrete skatepark building group Always Hard Concrete, and City Museum welder Dave Blum came up with an offer to buy the church from the unhoused group that got stuck with it in a deal to buy just the church’s rectory for their organization. Both wanted to bring skateboarding to an all too often looked neighborhood in North City because skating’s a sport where “if you could do a kickflip, you could do a kickflip,” Bedwell says, “[skaters] don’t see you, they see what can you do on a skateboard.” It’s that aspect of skating that made them want to blend such a universal acceptance into a space that’s, for such a long time, only been able to turn people away from its abandonment. While Blum works from the locally renowned Such and Such Farms, Bedwell builds skateparks all over St. Louis. Bedwell’s crowning achievement outside of Sk8 Liborius is the first legal skatepark in the city, Peter Mathews Memorial Skate Garden.
Built under the South Kingshighway Viaduct, a newly demolished elevated roadway that once divided the neighborhood, a community of skaters constructed a skatepark. The first version of the skatepark was technically illegal, but the city saw how Bedwell and his 501c(3) nonprofit, Kingshighway Vigilante Transitions, cleaned up the space and allowed them to stay. The city demolished the viaduct down the road, and the park went with it. The destruction of the park was not its last chapter; however, as a collaboration between Bedwell and his groups, the city and Tony Hawk’s foundation led to its rebirth as the first legal skatepark in St. Louis. Armed with a community of skaters, Bedwell and team managed to keep the park alive for the people it supports, even if its roof was no more.
Blum and his partner Autumn Sij at Such and Such farms began toiling the soil of their new property in De Soto, Missouri, in 2011. Setting out to do something different with his training in Industrial design from Pratt, Blum, and Sij built together the only boutique farm in the St. Louis area. Inspired by New Roots urban farm, who coincidentally were neighbors to the future Sk8 Liborius campus, Blum and Sij set off to De Soto to build their dream farm. Hosting highly sought-after private farm dinners, sourcing the meal directly from the fruits of their labors. Blum puts his degree to work by focusing on the structural aspects of the farm, while Sij maintains the livestock. Where they grow unique heirloom produce and raise heritage animals for chefs looking to get back to that direct relationship with their farmers. Despite the highly rustic nature of the farm, that city grit can still be found on the farm with the graffiti mural on the barn. Acting as a branch of Blum’s urban roots.
David Blum came to St. Liborius with Bedwell when they sought to buy the church from its then owners, Karen House. The Archdiocese of St. Louis still owned the land well after it had been abandoned by 1992, and Hogan Street only wanted to buy the rectory for their mission. However, the church insisted they either buy the whole property, the church included, or nothing. So when Bedwell and Blum approached Hogan Street with an offer to take the church off their hands Hogan Street offered to sell them the LLC that owns the property instead. Armed with volunteers, Bedwell and Blum cleared out the mess of an abandoned gothic church. Volunteers filled several 40-yard dumpsters worth of trash as they worked to get them ready for their transformation.
Built in 1889, St. Liborius stands as the tallest Gothic revival church west of the Mississippi. Yet its architectural magnificence couldn’t withstand the rising tide of changes brought to the city as white flight, red-lining, and general institutionalized racism sought to suffocate the growing black population migrating into the gateway to the West. Dense and vibrant brick townhome-lined neighborhoods like St. Louis Place, where St. Liborius looms large, saw the area sink into deeper poverty depths that pushed families to abandon their homes. Leaving blocks to crumble and decay, with once-packed plots turned into open spaces. This loss of liveliness left the church to be abandoned. The grand sculptures that once sat inside under the ornately painted ceilings also ditched the city for the county where they now reside in the suburban Sacred Heart Church in Eureka. Leaving a cavernous space of gold leaf murals adorning the vaulted ceilings held up by ornate Corinthian columns.
Life would return with a ravenous roar as, to help fund their vision, Bedwell and Blum hosted underground raves inside St. Liborius. Throwing giant parties and rock shows, “ Well, we go, we go to ask for forgiveness rather than permission situation, right?” Blum says as we get ready to go inside the church. Accompanied by Blum and Bedwell kids, respectively, we walk around the now hollowed-out church. Only kept in the shadows from the sun by the massive, nearly two-foot-thick brick exterior walls and steeple. “We also did it very safely,” Blum clarifies, “we put in our signs where you’re supposed to go [ in the church].”
The party funds allowed Blum to practice his welding by ensuring every aspect of their radical renovation was up to code, even if they didn’t necessarily get it approved by the city. “We never built anything you couldn’t have built by professional contractors,” Bedwell explains. They ensured that nothing was built without careful consideration for the integrity of the space. Over time, artists and muralists came and brought vibrant color back to the church while Bedwell and Blum built up the sanctuary of a skatepark. Eventually, the need for the parties waned as the park took form, and the group of creative rebels formed The LUAS nonprofit to act as the organizational side of the skating oasis of Sk8 Liborius.
Despite a few critics horrified at the idea of skaters in a church saying, “ ‘This is kind of sacrilegious.’” But Bedwell said they told them “this building would just be a parking lot” if it weren’t for them. Sk8 Liborius was later surprised when a group of Bostonian nuns entered the skatepark. Seeing nuns wander into a skatepark, especially in a repurposed catholic church, was unnerving. Bedwell and Blum were understandably keeping an eye as they took in the lively scene of kids skating. “They showed up and grabbed us, crying as they said, ‘You’re doing the lord’s work,’” Blum says. “They said what we were doing for the kids, giving them a space like this, was so important.” Blum and Bedwell laugh as they tell us how the nuns then ask if they could try skating and hop on a couple boards. Then Blum adds the cherry on top of this unreal moment when a nun asks for a beer and, without thinking, tosses her a cold one from the cooler. “ I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, I just threw a beer at a fucking nun’” David regales us. “ But this nun, she just overhand grabs the beer, no problem.” Without divulging too many secrets of the earlier Sk8 Liborius days, Bedwell guarantees skateboarding Bostonian nuns were just one of many unreal moments shared inside the church.
Tragically, after over 11 years of breathing life back into the towering gothic church, a fire started in the rectory on the property at around 10:45 p.m. on the 25th of June. While firefighters worked to put it out, embers from the rectory fire flew over onto the church’s wooden roof. Like what took down Notre Dame in Paris a few years ago, the old-growth wood used to build the interior rapidly disastrously caught fire. The firefighters worked quickly to alert the neighboring Hogan Street youth facility center as they moved the kids residing with them to the other side of their building out of fear the steeple could collapse onto their roof. Turning the scene into a four-alarm, one of the worst seen in the city as of late. The fire kept burning into the night as more embers spread into the neighborhood, taking out a vacant three-story home nearby.
The fire on the 17th of May in 1849 similarly saw the night light up in the sinister glow of towering flames. Leaving behind blocks of buildings lost and a hero made out of the fire captain who sacrificed his life to stop the fire from spreading by preemptively blowing up nearby buildings. The Basilica of St. Louis, the first cathedral West of the Mississippi, came out of the fire unscathed. The surrounding blocks made of wood that turned into ash led the city to create a new building code that ensured new buildings were built out of brick or stone. The same brick that would go on to be intrinsically tied into the city’s vernacular was the only aspect of Sk8 Liborius left after the firefighters eventually put out the fire the morning after. The church was built only a few decades after the code went into effect, and thanks to it, the magnificent gothic exterior still stands as its nearly two-foot-thick brick walls had been made in kilns that burn at far greater heat than those made by burning wood.
The now hollow structure cast some shade as Sk8 Liborius came to assess the damage, and during what could have been a moment of pure devastation, an ember of hope landed on the scene “ the day after, before the fighters were even gone. There’s people out here helping us out.” Blum tells us. “ And If you’re gonna quote anything from this, quote, ‘Thank you to everybody who’s helped us out.’”. He tells us how after the news broke, and they shared pictures of the deviation on their socials, the global Sk8 Liborius flock reached out to express their support. With offers for donations to kind words reminiscing on memories made in the church, they saw a bright light of love come from all those the skatepark had touched over the years. Followers even tagged Tony Hawk in comments, knowing he played a role in Bedwell’s creation of the second coming of the Peter Mathews Memorial Skate Garden. “If we build a big outdoor skate park, that’s where the Tony Hawk foundation could fit,” Blum adds. “ There’s the possibility of putting a roof on [ the church].” Eventually, the city’s cultural resource group reached out to offer their support if and when they should decide to rebuild, and for Blum and Bedwell, there was never any doubt of a revival.
The Sk8 Liborius team once again saw 40-yard dumpsters out front of the church as they made lines of volunteers and neighbors moving rubble into them. Clearing as much of the debris as they could, there was still a staggering pile of charred beams piling into the church to the point that for our photographer, Chris Welhausen, to enter the space, we had to enter through the remaining second-floor entrance. As we look out into the walled ruins of the massive gothic brick church, Blum tells us about how they’re getting architectural engineers out to fully assess the stability of the church, which will influence how exactly the skatepark will come back. “ An open-air skatepark is 100% the most feasible feasible,” Blum explains,” but I think it’s worth exploring these other ideas”. Blum goes on to explain that their architect is game as long as the structural integrity of the outer walls can handle it and that the city wants them to do that, too.
Sk8 Liborius, as a nonprofit, still has to get through special assessments and see if they can apply for historic tax credits with the state of Missouri, as any financial help they can get will make a difference in whether the revival is roofed or not. However, that focus on what the engineers come back with doesn’t change the fact that their team is entirely behind the idea of reviving Sk8 Liborius in whatever way they can. Even as the initial reaction to the devastation will likely never wholly subside, and the loss of an architectural era will never fully come back, these things don’t take away from Blum and Bedwell’s team of artists and innovators from looking forward to what’s on the horizon for Sk8 Liborius. Roofs the limit.
Deven Wilson is a journalist based in Austin, Texas.
