The National Trust for Historic Preservation has declared that May is Historic Preservation Month, and this year’s theme is “Celebrating America’s Treasures.” St. Louis is ready to celebrate, and here is one of this month’s first events!
Modern STL is proud to team with the Trustees of Ladue Estates to bring you the first ever Open House and Walking Tour of the first-ever Missouri mid-century modern neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places! Four houses will be open for your enjoyment. At 11am, noon and 1 pm, take a guided tour of the homes on West Ladue Estates Drive presented by residents Lea Ann Baker (the heroine who spent 3 years completing the National Register application) and architect David Connally.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
10 am – 2 pm
Ladue Estates, Creve Coeur MO 63141
$10 admission – $5 for Modern StL members
The Pleasure of the Landscape: Placemaking and Identity in the St. Louis Place Neighborhood
Thursday, April 28, 2011, 2-3 p.m.
Lewis Room, Library Basement
Fontbonne University
Michael R. Allen offers a critical examination of efforts to reframe the identity of the St. Louis Place neighborhood on the city’s near north side. St. Louis Place lost over 50% of its built environment between 1960 and 2010, but it retains sections of nearly untouched historic quality. The polarities of the landscape are frightening to some, sublime to others and reality to all. The current challenge is how to preserve and interpret what remains with joy and hope.
Modern STL and the Architecture Section of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild present a free lecture, “Building With Bernoudy.”
The story of working with and adding to a William Bernoudy-designed house becomes a lesson of “complexity and contradiction in architecture” on a very local and personal level. Builder and designer Richard Reilly will share the story of renovating and updating the 1953 Simms House (located at #3 Sumac Lane in Ladue) with his drawings and photos of the project.
Thursday, April 7 · 7:30pm – 10:00pm
The Sanctuary: 21st Ward Community Center
4449 Red Bud Ave
The 21st Ward contains some of St. Louis’s most beautiful neighborhoods and green spaces. Not content to watch these treasures slip into decline, the ward’s leadership, from Alderman Antonio French to dedicated staffers and neighborhood residents, has been hard at work to make it a better place to live, work, and visit. From new walking trails in lush O’Fallon Park, to a partnership with Rebuilding Together St. Louis for a Block-by-Block Initiative that sees one historic block renovated and cleaned up at a time, the 21st Ward has no shortage of initiatives that the rest of the city’s 27 Wards could and should be watching and learning from.
City Affair is proud to announce that Alderman Antonio French, State Representative Jamilah Nasheed and Preservation Research Office Director Michael Allen will present us with an overview of the tremendous activity and forward momentum in the 21st Ward. All of this will take place in the ward’s planned community center–an historic church recently rescued from vacancy.
Lunch Talk: Three Mid-Century Modern Houses Wednesday, March 30 at 11:00 am Cafe DeMenil 3352 DeMenil Place
Michael R. Allen will discuss three of St. Louis mid-century modern houses and their relationship to each other and to national housing trends. These houses are the Joseph and Ann Murphy Residence in University City (1939; Murphy & Wischmeyer), Stonebrook in Jefferson County (1959; Harris Armstrong — shown at left) and the Harry Hammerman House in Ladue (1952; Harry Hammerman). The talk will last about 20 minutes, with lunch served afterward.
Lunch Special for $6.95, plus full menu available. Reservations recommended. More Information: 314-771-5829.
Tomorrow’s City Seminar at Washington University is led by Ben Looker, professor at St. Louis University and chronicler of urban cultural movements of the recent past.
Visions of Autonomy: Surveying the 1970s Neighborhoods Movement, from New Left to White Ethnic Revival
March 25, 2011 at 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Busch Hall Room 18, Washington University in St. Louis
Benjamin Looker, Assistant Professor of American Studies at St. Louis University (and a Washington Univ. alum) examines the radical politics of neighborhood autonomy that characterized the utopianist vanguard of the broader 1970s neighborhoods movement. After sketching its leaders’ New Left origins, Looker investigates the tensions and fissures that defined this growing urban network as leftists, libertarians, white ethnic activists, civil rights organizers, and alternative-technology evangelists jostled in provisional and unstable alliances. By tracing the often conflicted ideas of “neighborhood” and “democracy” deployed by movement intellectuals and activists, the presentation suggests that this emphatic thrust for neighborhood-level autonomy eventually contributed both to the rise of the New Right and to the formation of a dissident, localist urban counterculture.
Kevin W. Tucker, The Margot B. Perot Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Dallas Museum of Art, will speak about “Modernity, Medievalism, and the American Home: Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement”, on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 7 P.M. at the Missouri History Museum Lee Auditorium. The lecture is co-sponsored by The Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park and the Missouri History Museum. It is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the lecture.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of joining Paul J. McKee, Jr., Antonio French and Stephen Acree for the panel on “Regeneration” during Open/Closed, a groundbreaking conference on vacant property in St. Louis. Perhaps the majesty of Joseph Conradi’s design of the Most holy Trinity Church sanctuary prevented any expected rancor, but I credit both the deft moderation of Cynthia Jordan and the spirit of the conference itself for leading the discussion away from any predictable drama.
Moderator RJ Kocielniak asks questions of panelists Michelle Duffe, Otis Williams, Audrey Spalding and Yvonne Sparks during the panel.
Drama would have been a distraction. I confess to wanting deliberately to focus on specific goals and actions during what was often an abstract — but healthy — conversation. The reason for this was that Open/Closed showed how much common ground exists between people supposedly diametrically opposed in goals. What I heard was that most panelists want to dream big but work hard, and everyone wants to revitalize the economy of the city as well as cure its cultural defects. Vacant property is a huge problem, but we all know that it is a symptom of regional stasis and city disease that we must end.
Andrew Weil, Roderick Jones, Romona Taylor-Williams and Tom Moes on the "Vacancy and Schools" panel.
We have a lot of work ahead, and we need to develop the 21st century approach to renewing St. Louis. Every panelist and speaker at Open/Closed is working on a version of that approach, sometimes — as with Paul McKee, Jr. and I — in conflict. Differences in approach are not big problems so long as there are so few people searching for a new way forward. Our challenge is to use our common ground to grow the number of people and resources being deployed to transform the city and make the region a national magnet. We can debate the finer points of Land Reutilization Authority policy or Northside Regeneration’s development program, but until there is robust demand for vacant land held by the city, McKee or anyone else, we are chasing minor targets.
Sylvester Brown, Jr. delivering the keynote address.
The challenge ahead is transforming such wide agreement on the major problems facing St. Louis into workable actions. Otherwise we are just having lovely conversations about some very ugly problems that will continue to worsen. I hesitate to offer a string of abstract things we need to do to rebuild city government, cut through racism, rally behind entrepreneurs and other things that people talked about this weekend. The bottom line really is that anyone who recognizes that vacancy in St. Louis — especially the intensive abandonment of north St. Louis — is the symptom of a declining culture has to get to work rebuilding that culture. Some of us can afford to have our family foundations target grants or loans, others can start organizing block units, some can buy and rehab vacant buildings and others can use their official positions to create policies that direct scarce resources to neighborhoods that actually need targeted public money. (Oh, and we all can vote.) The problem in enormous, but the cure is collective.
I commend Next STL, Frontier St. Louis, Rebuild Foundation and the other organizers of Open/Closed. Your work itself is an action step — the next step is ours.
While you are on Cherokee Street tonight, stop by this wonderful show. Works in Jessi’s show take inspiration from the historic course of the River Des Peres, (alas) not frequently the source of visual art. – M.R.A.
Intangible Rivers: A Subjective History by Jessi Cerutti
Reception: 5:30-10p, March 18
Location: The Zeigenhein, 3346 Texas Ave.
A lifelong resident of St. Louis, Jessi Cerutti explores personal memory and local history through printmaking and fiber arts in this SIUE MFA Printmaking Thesis Exhibition. Cerutti pushes the limits of the traditional print, merging ink and fiber to create objects that illustrate an accumulation of history, memory, and change. The exhibition features print and sculptural artifacts alongside installation-based works. Enjoy drinks and the music of WolfPeach Society DJ Collective during the reception.
