Category: Mid-Century Modern

Categories
Mid-Century Modern Midtown

Council Plaza: Exceptionally Significant

Council Plaza is located at 212-300 S. Grand Boulevard and consists of two residential towers, a two-story commercial building over covered parking and the space-age Phillips 66 service station that is now a Del Taco restaurant. These buildings were built between 1964 and 1968. In 2007, the National Park Service placed Council Plaza on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district despite their relatively young age. The listing affirmed that Council Plaza had “exceptional significance” under National Register guidelines and could be listed ahead of its 50th birthday.

Read more history in the National Register of Historic Places nomination prepared by Melinda Winchester of Lafser & Associates.

Categories
Central West End Downtown Mid-Century Modern Midtown Motels North St. Louis South St. Louis

Motels in the City of St. Louis

by Michael R. Allen

A version of this article first appeared in the Winter 2009 NewsLetter of the St. Louis Chapter of the Society Architectural Historians.

There is ample recognition of the significance of mid-century motels along roadsides across America, where motels used colorful signage and design to beckon to weary Americans enjoying their automotive freedom. Perhaps because of nostalgic idealization of the motor court and the “open road” and perhaps because of the stigma that postwar urban renewal efforts have attained, local history overlooks the significant wave of urban motel construction that took place in St. Louis between 1958 and 1970.

Advertisement for the Bel Air Motel. Note that the front wing does not yet have the third story addition.

The 1958 opening of the Bel Air Motel on Lindell Boulevard renewed the building of lodging in the City of St. Louis while introducing a hotel form new to the city, the motel. St. Louis’ last new hotel before that was the nearby Park Plaza Hotel (1930), a soaring, elegant Art Deco tower built on the cusp of the Great Depression. However, another hotel built before the Depression was more indicative of future trends than the Park Plaza. In 1928, Texas developer and automobile travel enthusiast Percy Tyrell opened the Robert E. Lee Hotel at 205 N. 18th Street in downtown St. Louis (listed in the National Register on February 7, 2007), designed by Kansas City architect Alonzo Gentry. While the 14-story Renaissance Revival hotel was stylistically similar to contemporary hotels, it introduced the chain economy hotel to St. Louis.

Continue reading “Motels in the City of St. Louis”
Categories
Ladue Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

Two Houses by Isadore Shank

by Michael R. Allen

Two weeks ago, the Sheldon Art Galleries kicked off the St. Louis end of National Preservation Month with a tour of four houses designed by Isadore Shank. Shank (1902-1992) was one of St. Louis’ most masterful designers of Modern buildings, and his career produced many significant residences, apartment buildings, office buildings and even a city hall. Shank and his colleague Jim Auer also laid out the Graybridge subdivision in Ladue.

Siegel House (1956), 5 Sherwyn Lane in Ladue.

Shank’s residential legacy was well represented by the Sheldon’s selection of Isadore Shank’s own house (1940), the Siegel House (1956), the Limberg House (1960) and the Kraus House (1977). The range of dates shows the evolution of Shank’s engagement of masonry (including recycled brick), wood elements, natural light, the open plan and site placement. Although interior photograph was not allowed, the exteriors demonstrate well Shank’s search for harmony between built and natural environment as well as interior and exterior worlds. (Ted Wight has posted interior photographs of the Shank House here.)  Here we present two of the houses on tour built just four years apart, the Siegel and Limberg houses.

The entrance to the Siegel House.
Continue reading “Two Houses by Isadore Shank”
Categories
Housing Mid-Century Modern North St. Louis Pruitt Igoe

Standing By Yamasaki

by Michael R. Allen

On April 24, after a tornado struck Lambert Airport, the New York Times published the article “Struggling St. Louis Airport Takes a Shot to the Chin, but Recovers.” While many St. Louisans quibbled over the symbolic image of the city encapsulated in the adjective “struggling” (applied to only the airport), I found a less immediate semiotic matter of interest. Namely, the article was accompanied by a striking color photograph of Lambert Airport’s iconic main terminal (1956) in the background behind architect Gyo Obata, who directed the project for the firm Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber. Obata is the last living link to the firm and its renowned principal Minoru Yamasaki, and his presence in the photograph of a boarded-up, weather-beaten terminal conveys strong pride in its design and concern for its future.

In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes writes about the punctum, that part of a photograph’s meaning “that pierces the viewer.” The punctum is subjective, and may diverge from any obvious or intended symbolism in an image. In that New York Times photograph, showing the architect’s watch over a damaged part of Yamasaki’s modernist legacy, I quickly noticed my punctum, a place not represented directly in the photograph but so immediately present in my mind: Pruitt-Igoe.

Image of the Pruitt Homes under construction from the 1955 catalog of the Stephen Gorman Bricklaying Company, which was the masonry contractor for the project. Courtesy of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.
Continue reading “Standing By Yamasaki”
Categories
Central West End Hospitals Mid-Century Modern

Queeny Tower (1965 – ?)

by Michael R. Allen

Upon completion in 1965, the Queeny Tower at Barnes Hospital — located in the northeast corner of Kingshighway’s original 90-degree bend — was the city’s third tallest building. The 19 stories of the proudly modern high-rise stood at some 97 meters, slightly taller than the Park Plaza Hotel (1930; Schopp & Baumann) to the north, which is 94.4 meters tall. The Gateway Arch had yet to top out, so the two tallest buildings in 1965 remained the Southwestern Bell Tower at 1010 Pine Street (1926; Mauran, Russell & Crowell), 121 meters, and the Civil Courts (1930, Klipstein & Rathmann), 117.6 meters. Nowadays, the Queeny Tower is the twelfth tallest building in St. Louis, if the Arch is included, so the achievement of its construction may be somewhat lost. Yet at its completion the city had few tall buildings, and the most recent in the range of Queeny were already 35 years old. (An interesting illustrated chart of St. Louis building heights can be found here.)

Thus Queeny Tower was a milestone in the rise of Barnes Hospital, which today is corporate amalgam BJC and remains a prolific builder of tall buildings at its Central West End campus. Again, the escalation of ability to finance and build large, tall buildings means that Queeny Tower has become less than a star attraction at the hospital. Plus the current trend in hospital architecture is to treat all buildings, even those designed by revered masters, as simple machines to be discarded upon obsolescence. Shall Queeny somehow be exempt from the race to replace? Not likely. Queeny, which replaced an older medical building itself, was born from the economy that will eventually destroy it.

Continue reading “Queeny Tower (1965 – ?)”
Categories
Mid-Century Modern St. Louis County

Tropicana Owner Tino DiFranco on Bowling in St. Louis

The owner of Tropicana Lanes, Tino DiFranco, spoke at the Tropicanniversary — the 50th birthday party for the bowling alley — on March 15, 2011.  Modern STL sponsored the event, which attracted a large crowd that celebrated one of the region’s best-known “Googie” buildings. More on the building soon — here’s Tino.


Categories
Historic Boats Mid-Century Modern

Admiral Reaping Scrap Windfall

by Michael R. Allen

St. Louis Marine, owner of the S.S. Admiral, got lucky: the company is scrapping out the mostly-metal boat at a time when scrap value is up. According to one observer, the scrap weight of the Admiral is 3300 tons, and the cost of dismantling is about $50 per ton. By the time the streamlined ex-steamer exists only in public memory, St. Louis Marine is likely to have made anywhere from $600,000 – $700,000 in scrap.

Categories
Historic Boats Mid-Century Modern Riverfront

S.S. Admiral, RIP

by Michael R. Allen

Soon the S.S. Admiral’s streamline, art moderne superstructure may be converted into cold hard cash at the going rates as high as $300 a ton. As soon as next week the old boat may be towed away to be picked apart by the skilled hands at the appropriately-named Cash’s Metal Recycling. So goes the 71-year run of the city’s finest floating pleasure palace.

Yet preservation circles are mostly silent on the death of one of the city’s most beloved mid-century icons. Perhaps the end of the boat has seemed like a foregone conclusion ever since its engines were removed in 1979. That act tore away the best reason to set foot upon the Admiral: being able to glide up, down and around the Mississippi River while dining, dancing, courting and sparking. The Admiral’s short life as a moored entertainment center was a bust, and its subsequent use as a casino was extended not through any great affection but by Missouri’s now-defunct loss limit law that sent Lumiere Place patrons over to keep their fix flowing. The Admiral’s once-dazzling interior had long been denuded of any of the swanky swagger of yesteryear. What was left was an artifact — a riverboat left without engines, dining room, band stand or dance floor.

Of course, the S.S. Admiral was not a hopeless cause, and wild imaginations conjured future worlds in which the Admiral was pulled onshore and reclaimed with artistic license. Yet no one imagined bidding fairly on the Admiral at auction in November — not a single party. There were no last-ditch “Save the Admiral” campaigns, a fact counterbalanced by the persistent and now well-organized effort to save the earlier Goldenrod Showboat.

The swell of nostalgia that saves Historic Things did not flood over the Admiral, which may have been too young and too much a part of the unpleasant present-day reality of gambling to be a fitting subject. The S.S. Admiral’s demise points to the need for continued advocacy for parts of our built past that are within our grasp. A building (or boat) young enough to be part of the lives of many people still living should be revered because it touches so many lives still being led.

(For a personal look back at the S.S. Admiral, I recommend Marilyn Kinsella’s “S.S. Admiral, I Salute You!”.)

Categories
Historic Preservation Mid-Century Modern

Mid-Century Modern Preservation and the Generation Gap

Last night Toby Weiss and I presented a talk on mid-century modern preservation and the new group Modern STL at the Alton Area Landmarks Association‘s monthly membership meeting. Here’s a clip of Toby discussing how the generation gap plays out in the rise of the movement to preserve modern architecture. – Michael R. Allen

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.