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Built in 1904, this Classical Revival-style building was designed by Cass Gilbert as the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, a World’s Fair. The building features a marble and buff roman brick exterior, with arched window bays, a front portico with corinthian columns, porticoes at the end bays of the front facade with ionic columns and pediments, a cornice with modillions and dentils, a central gabled roof with arched clerestory windows, decorative stone and gold sculptures, and doric pilasters. The building was extended with a southern addition in the late 20th Century, which features ribbon windows, a terraced massing, sloped glass skylights, and decorative patterned brickwork. The building was further expanded between 2009 and 2013 to the east with a new addition, designed by Sir David Chipperfield and HOK, which features a gridded concrete roof structure with multiple skylight apertures, glass curtain walls, precast polished concrete panels, reveals at the base, and large terraces, with the addition being designed so as to blend into the surrounding landscape and defer to the historic adjacent museum building. Today, the museum building is one of several remnants of the 1904 World’s Fair, and is one of many cultural amenities within Forest Park in St. Louis.
Built in 1907, this Gothic Revival-style building was designed by Mauran, Russell, and Garden for the congregation of Second Baptist Church, founded in 1833. The building was constructed in an area that, at the time, was developing as a rather affluent suburban district within the city of St. Louis, and was the result of the church following members of its congregation as they moved westward from their previous neighborhoods closer to Downtown, with the church eventually leaving this building 50 years after its construction for a new location in Richmond Heights. The building is clad in orange brick, with a red terra cotta tile gabled roof, decorative patterned brickwork, gothic arched bays, stained glass windows, a central courtyard with a cloister and freestanding tower, stone trim at the entrance portals, and a stone base. The building is a contributing structure in the Holy Corners Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The building, since 1957, has had several congregations come and go, but has remained vacant for decades, with the most recent effort to utilize the building being an attempt to turn it into the Gospel Hall of Fame, which suffered a setback when the tower was damaged by fire in 2021. As of 2024, the building is once again up for sale.
Built in 1908, this Renaissance Revival-style building was designed by William B. Ittner to serve as a public school for the Carr Square neighborhood. The building is notable for its layout, situated on a corner lot with a courtyard in the front, a two-story kindergarten classroom wing at the center of the building’s front facade, flanked by two identical wings that stretch to the adjacent streets. The building is clad ins ed brick with a gabled red terra cotta tile roof, terra cotta trim accents, double-hung windows, and bracketed eaves. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. The building, which ceased operation as an elementary school in 1983, and has languished in a state of increasing deterioration and vacancy ever since, with multiple planned adaptive reuse projects failing to come to fruition. The building today has lost most of its roof to collapse, and is missing multiple windows, with the exterior walls in an increasingly advanced state of disrepair. Despite the building’s architectural significance and proximity to Downtown St. Louis, its location in a sparse and low-income neighborhood on the north side leaves little chance of it being rehabilitated anytime soon, and time is running out for this remarkable example of urban public school architecture.
A few more pictures from St. Louis this past week when I got some pictures of Trains.
March 21, 2019
St. Louis, Missouri
Built in 1909, this Viennese Secessionist-style house was designed by Thomas P. Barnett of Barnett, Haynes and Barnett for J. W. Thompson. The house is a rare example of the Vienna Secession outside of Europe. Closely affiliated with the Art Nouveau movement, another aesthetic trend rarely seen in the United States, the house was originally more elaborate, complete with ornate balconies and decorative trim on the four green marble pillars of the front facade, which were removed when the house was butchered by a subsequent owner, whom found them gaudy, reducing the house to a plain box, with the missing elements being partially reconstructed by an owner in the 1980s, though with less ornament and detail than the originals. The house is clad in yellow buff brick with large window bays containing casement windows, limestone and green serpentinite marble trim, a one-story sunroom on the west side of the house, clad in limestone, with decorative reliefs, a front terrace with circular planters atop stone piers, and a decorative frieze around the building’s parapet. Despite the house’s immense architectural significance, it is not designated as a historic landmark, and the unfortunate alterations, though partially reversed, have diminished the beauty, authenticity, and complexity of the house’s original design.
The buildings along Washington Avenue demonstrate several late 19th and early 20th Century styles, and were constructed primarily as warehouses and factories for the then-booming industrial center of St. Louis. The buildings are predominately made of brick masonry, and today house a variety of uses, including offices, retail shops, restaurants, bars, and apartments. The buildings are contributing structures in the Washington Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
Opened in 1997, the City Museum was founded by artist Bob Cassilly, and his wife, Gail Cassilly, to serve as an art and architectural museum with a very whimsical theme, featuring multiple tunnels, decorative architectural ornament relics, art installations, slides, staircases, and various other exhibits, attractions, and installations. The museum is housed in the former International Shoe Company Annex, built in 1931, which is a contributing structure in the Washington Avenue Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.