3713 S. Jefferson Avenue

The lovely dwelling at 2713 S. Jefferson Avenue.
The lovely dwelling at 2713 S. Jefferson Avenue.

Location: Gravois Park; St. Louis, MO
Type of Project: Historic Renovation
PRO Services: Historic Tax Credit Application
Commencement: 2014

PRO assisted the developer of this property with preparation of a joint Missouri and federal historic tax credit application. The single dwelling, built in 1889, provides one unit of the rich architectural character of Jefferson Avenue between Cherokee and Chippewa streets at the eastern edge of the Gravois Park neighborhood.

Past rehabilitation removed historic features and left the house with some of the silliest applied plastic detailing on an exterior door in St. Louis. The proposed rehabilitation will restore many missing features, including appropriate windows, and update the interior. Former Project Associate Lydia Slocum spent hours working with State Historic Preservation Office and National Park Service reviewers to sort through the puzzles of which interior elements were historic, which were reproductions and which were historic but relocated.

This two story single-family building — detailed with elements appropriated from both the Romanesque Revival and the Second Empire styles — fits the typology of early working and middle-class housing typical of the Gravois-Jefferson Streetcar Suburb Historic District and as described in the Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) South St. Louis Historic Working- and Middle-Class Streetcar Suburbs.

The building corresponds with the period (1890-1910) in which the vast majority of the contributing buildings in the Gravois-Jefferson district were constructed. In addition, the building has many of the features common to residential buildings in the district: brick facade with a raised limestone foundation and signature brickwork elements, including articulated arches and decorative blocks in the Classical Revival style. The dwelling adjacent to the north is nearly identical and originates from the same building permit.