Category: Events

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Events

Sunset Hills Historical Society Program on the Lemp Estate

Sunset Hills Historical Society Program on the Lemp Estate Hosts Guest Speaker Davidson Mullgardt
Monday, March 28 at 7 PM at the Sunset Hills Community Center

The Sunset Hills Historical Society will hold its monthly meeting on Monday, March 28 at 7 PM at the Sunset Hills Community Center. The featured speaker will be Davidson Mullgardt, who will be speaking about the Lemp Estate, located in Sunset Hills. The home was formerly owned by the Lemp family who brewed Falstaff beer.

“Because many of the records were destroyed, there are recent discoveries about the Lemp saga,” said Davidson Mullgardt, historian and former high school English teacher.

He will be demonstrating some of those discoveries, discussing the Lemp family, their beer-brewing business as well as the architecture of the home that is in Sunset Hills.

The Lemp Estate is currently a private residence and inaccessible to the public.

The City Hall of Sunset Hills is located at 3939 South Lindbergh Blvd. and the Community Center is just behind it in the same complex.

 

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Events

This Week: Mid-Mod Bowling, Mythory and Vacant Property

by Michael R. Allen

A very busy week starts tonight…

Tropicanniversary
Tuesday, March 15 from 6 – 9 pm
Tropicana Lanes, 7960 Clayton Road

Tonight we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of St. Louis’ best-known postwar bowling alley, Tropicana Lanes. All are welcome! The Tropicana owner, Tino DiFranco, is turning over 26 lanes to Modern STL fans and lowering the price. At 7 p.m., Tino and I will present a program on the history of the Tropicana and bowling culture in St. Louis. We’ve pulled together an illustrated slideshow on Tropicana and Googie architecture in St. Louis, too, which you can watch as you pick up that spare…

St Louis Mythory Tour
Friday, March 18 starting at 5:00 p.m.
Cherokee Street west of Jefferson Avenue

On Friday, March 18th Cherokee street will be alive like never before with art, music, food, drinks, and live demonstrations on almost every block as local artists and business owners collaborate to welcome over 1,500 visitors to St. Louis for the Southern Graphics Conference International.

Emily Hemeyer and I have joined together to create a series of semi-temporary kiosks highlighting bizarre sights and fantastic stories that make St Louis’ history nearly mythological. Kiosks will provide glimpses and directions to curiosities such as the sunken ship, hidden street car entrances, the Pruitt-Igoe wildlife area, buried caves, and mound formations of the ancients. Prior to city-wide distribution, seven kiosks will be “hidden” throughout Cherokee Street for conference-goers to enjoy now and explore later.

Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis
Friday, March 18 and Saturday, March 19
Old North and Hyde Park

Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis is an event that readers of this blog need to attend. The city’s first annual conference on vacant property presents an opportunity for community stakeholders, leaders, artists, and activists to strengthen their knowledge of the vacant property issue and to develop new solutions.

Panels will explore successful reuse strategies (economic and creative), community engagement, the role of city government and whether wide-scale reuse of vacant land in St. Louis is feasible. Vacant schools get a stand-alone panel at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, with Landmarks Association’s Assistant Director Andrew Weil included. On Saturday at 4:15 p.m. I have the honor of joining Stephen Acree, Hank Webber and Paul J. McKee, Jr. for a panel on “Regeneration.” With our different approaches and skill sets, the conversation will be provocative, wide-ranging and hopefully informative. Saturday night concludes with a special sneak preview of Bill Streeter’s forthcoming Brick by Chance and Fortune.

I may end this week exhausted, but between the joy of bowling, the amazing display of creativity Friday and the intense examination of our future on Saturday you should end it with a sense that anything is possible in this big city called St. Louis.

Categories
Events North St. Louis Riverfront

Two North Riverfront Public Meetings in March

Branch Street Connector Public Meeting
Thursday, March 10

5:30pm – Branch Street Walk-Through
6:00pm – Meeting and Visioning Session

LOCATION: For both the walk-through and the meeting, meet at Old North Restoration Group Office, 2700 N. 14th Street

The Mississippi River, the Riverfront Trail, and the McKinley Bikeway are incredible resources that are just a 10-minute walk or 5-minute bike ride from our community, but most of us rarely visit them because we don’t have safe access. Branch Street is our community’s only remaining direct connection to these assets. We need your help to create a new vision for Branch Street. Please join us for a walk-through and visioning session to identify the major issues and generate ideas for improving Branch. The meeting will include an update on the Trestle project from Great Rivers Greenway staff.

Port/North Riverfront Land Use Study Public Informational Meeting
Thursday, March 24, 2011 – 4:00pm until 6:00pm

Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) Bissell Point Waste Water Treatment
Plant
Environmental Compliance Building Auditorium
10 East Grand Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63147

The North Riverfront of the City of St. Louis (stretching from Mallinckrodt at the south end to Cementland at the north) is currently undergoing a RFP process for long-term land use planning. This area accounts for over a third of the entire Mississippi River frontage of the city of St. Louis, is home to the Riverfront Trail, proposed Iron Horse Trestle, and a good percentage of historical industrial architecture.

Directions:
1. Take I-70 to Grand Avenue
2. Go east until Grand Avenue dead-ends at the front gates of the MSD Bissell Point Wastewater Treatment Plant
3. Enter the front gates and follow the signs to the Environmental Compliance building
4. The auditorium is located inside this building, just to the left as you enter the front doors.

Categories
Events

Next Sunday: “Bound For the Promised Land”

This year, the Old Courthouse Players follow the paths of three St. Louisans who journeyed to the West…

As always, NiNi and Sheila Harris have prepared a script taken straight from the words of the historical figures themselves. Figures with surprising St. Louis connection in the play include Buffalo Bill Cody, who met his future wife and city native Louisa Frederici in St. Louis’ Frenchtown district, to German-American Otto Barby, whose path to becoming an Oklahoma land baron began in south St. Louis.

Those with any doubts about the entertainment offered by a historical radio-style play should note that this will be the Old Courthouse Players’ first play to make use of sound effects.  Perhaps  also the players themselves will draw at least one person; the cast includes Michael Allen, Jennifer Clark, Doug Dunphy, Jennifer Halla, Joan Hempen, Annette Hudson, John Knoll, Bob Officer, Craig Schmid and Debbie Wheeler.

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Events

Wednesday: Recent St. Louis Historic Districts

This Wednesday, join our own Lynn Josse as she discusses some of St. Louis’ recent historic districts over lunch at the Cafe DeMenil at the historic Chatillon-DeMenil House. Lynn’s illustrated talk kicks off the cafe’s series of lunch time lectures.

Place: Cafe DeMenil 3352 DeMenil Place St. Louis, MO 63118
Time: 11:00 am
Lunch Special for $6.95, plus full menu available. Reservations recommended
More Information: 314-771-5829

Categories
Events Lewis Place North St. Louis

Rehabbers Club Tour of Lewis Place Tomorrow

Detail of the Lewis Place gate at Taylor Avenue, designed by Barnett, Haynes & Barnett and completed in 1894.

St. Louis Rehabbers Club Tour of Lewis Place
Saturday, February 19, 2011
9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Location: 4535 Lewis Place, St. Louis, MO 63113

The St. Louis Rehabbers Club will feature Lewis Place. The neighborhood is immediately north of the Central West End and was recently in the news for extensive tornado damage. Our tour will not only look at rehabs, but will also view the tornado damage to these historic properties.

Our first stop of the day is 4535 Lewis Place. The new home owner and rehabber has lots to show on the work completed. With a setback from the tornado, the property owner is eager to move forward on other projects around the house.

Next, we will move to #50 Lewis Place. This young family purchased her grandparents’ home several years ago and have done an excellent job fixing it up.

We’ll look at the damage on Enright and Newberry Terrace before visiting 4604 Newberry. This gentleman inherited this home almost two years after his 90 year old dad passed away. He has been working on this house since then and is happy to show his rehab progress.

Lastly, we’ll ride and view the damage on Page, Martin Luther King Dr, Aldine, Cote Brillian, and Evans. If time permits we will visit 4530 Evans. Work has been done on the living room, dining room and kitchen though it too sustained some tornado damage.

For more information on Lewis Place, please visit Lewis Place Historical Preservation.

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday morning. Call Scott McIntosh, St. Louis Rehabbers Club Vice-President at 314-719-6507 with questions.

St. Louis Rehabbers Club tours are FREE and are open to anyone interested in the City of St. Louis. St. Louis Rehabbers Club is program of ReVitalize St. Louis, a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization. For more information, please visit www.rvstl.org.

Categories
Art Events

Exhibition on Max Lazarus at the Sheldon

Max Lazarus: Trier / St. Louis / Denver — A Jewish Artist’s Fate
February 18 – May 7, 2011
Opening Friday, February 18 from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
The Sheldon Art Galleries

Organized by the Stadtmuseum Simeonstift, Trier, Germany, this exhibition traces the life and artistic development of the German-Jewish artist Max Lazarus (1892-1961) through over 50 paintings, lithographs and synagogue designs. An extraordinary colorist, Lazarus produced expressive works that included landscapes, portraits, and some politically charged subjects. Lazarus fled Germany in 1938, after being forced to work secretly in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party. He lived first in St. Louis, where he had a family, then moved to Denver, Colorado, where he contracted tuberculosis.

His early career is represented in the exhibition with a self-portrait, several Trier landscapes, and a number of prints. Scenes from his time in St. Louis, like views of the Old Courthouse, Grand Avenue and the United Hebrew Synagogue (now the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center), as well as paintings that reflect the changing Denver cityscape in the 1940s and 50s, are also included. Lazarus’s story stands as an example of innumerable “disrupted biographies” that occurred during the rise of the Nazis to power. Lazarus’s life and career were disrupted twice: first by the Nazis and then by his health. He died in Denver, Colorado in 1961. A selection of Lazarus’s synagogue mural designs will be on view during this time in a separate exhibition in the Bernoudy Gallery of Architecture.

The exhibition is underwritten by the David S. Millstone Arts Foundation with additional support from Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg, The Millstone Foundation, Gary and Sherry Wolff, Esley Hamilton and Angela M. Gonzales.

Categories
Events Mid-Century Modern

Tropicana Lanes 50th Anniversary Moved to March 15th

RESET!

Due to road conditions Modern STL has moved Tropicanniversary, the official 50th anniversary party for mid-century landmark Tropicana Lanes, to next month. The event was canceled due to inclement weather on February 2, and was rescheduled for tomorrow, but many people could not switch on short notice, so:

Tropicanniversary will now take place on Tuesday, March 15 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at Tropicana Lanes, 7960 Clayton Road. The rest of the details remain the same.

Categories
Events JNEM Mid-Century Modern

Wednesday Evening Events

On Wednesday, two events dealing with St. Louis mid-century modern architecture are up against each other — take your pick between seeing about the yet-unseen revised plan for the Arch grounds project and a lecture by Edward Durrell Stone’s son on his father’s architectural legacy. Also that night the Riverfront Times will be giving out its web awards. We are happy to relay that this blog is a finalist.

REPORT TO THE COMMUNITY: THE ARCH GROUNDS DESIGN CONCEPT PRESENTATION
Wednesday, January 26 at 6:00 p.m.
Ferrara Theater, America’s Center, 8th & Washington
Open to the public; pre-registration is preferred.

Lead designer Michael Van Valkenburgh, members of his design team and others, will update the community on the design concept and discuss next steps for invigorating the Arch grounds and making connections to downtown St. Louis, the Mississippi River and the Illinois riverbank area, and next steps for community
comments. Details here.

EDWARD DURRELL STONE: MAN AND ARCHITECT
Wednesday, January 26 at 6:30 p.m.
Lee Auditorium in the Missouri History Museum
Free and open to the public

Hicks Stone, architect, author, and son of Edward Durell Stone, will present anextensive illustrated review and commentary on his father’s work,which includes the former Busch Stadium. Sponsored by Landmarks Association of St. Louis. Details here.

Categories
Events Grafitti

Panel: Graffiti, Art or Vandalism?

Flood wall, south riverfront.
Thursday, February 3
Fort Gondo
3151 Cherokee Street
Saint Louis, MO
Doors open at 7:00 PM
Discussion begins at 7:30 PM

Graffiti is as old as civilization itself, with examples found thousands of years ago in the pyramids of ancient Egypt and the Roman city of Pompeii. In contemporary America, any resident or visitor to a city — or even small towns–will see graffiti covering overpasses, abandoned structures and the sides of buildings.

On February 3rd, we will host a panel discussion that asks the following questions:

Is graffiti a valid form of artistic or political expression?
Does graffiti contribute to a sense that a neighborhood is blighted?
Can graffiti be a positive influence on city life, or is it alwaysdetrimental?
Who decides what is good graffiti, and what is bad?
Can different sides of the graffiti debate come to a consensus on itsvalidity?

Please come to City Affair and contribute your opinions and questions. The panel discussion will be followed by a question and answer session from the audience. Doors open at 7:00 PM, discussion begins at 7:30.

Panelists include:

Pete Wollaeger, local artis, inventor of the “eyeball” http://www.stensoul.com/
Angelo Olegna, “Mayor of Cherokee Street”
And addition panelists to be announced.

Sponsored by City Affair.