By Martha K. Baker
Photographs by Ashley Heifner
The Compton Heights subdivision, beautifully sited behind tiara-topped gates, is also fully sited on the Internet. Every one of the neighborhood’s 240 homes is pictured and described on stlouis.missouri.org/comptonheights, and the neighborhood also has its own Yahoo! Group site for disseminating everyday info: Here’s a good place to eat. Know a good fence-mender? Who needs these radiator covers I’m going to jettison?
After the windstorm of ’06 turned trees to tinder, concerned neighbors headed outside to see whether everyone was all right, says Lindsay Barth, board president of the Compton Heights Neighborhood Betterment Association. “Compton Heights is an old-fashioned neighborhood,” he adds. “We care for one another. We socialize at neighborhood parties, and we gather on porches to actually talk to each other.”
“Out of about 240 homes, I know people in probably 220 of them,” says Steve Crouch, a market researcher who lives in a relatively small, by Compton Heights standards, 3,200-square-foot house built in 1913.
Gates of Glory: Frank T. Hilliker, an engineer and Compton Heights resident, collaborated with St. Louis artist Rodney Winfield (who designed the stained-glass Space Window in the Washington National Cathedral) on the tiara gate design. The tiara was placed atop the old cast-iron standards in 1966.
The Pitzman: Julius Pitzman, who designed Forest Park and Vandeventer Place, laid out the pleasingly serpentine public streets of Compton Heights’ 250 acres in 1889. He named the two main streets for writers Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Just off Grand Boulevard, those streets split, creating a grassy island perfect for the neighborhood’s Oktoberfest.
Residents: Until 1970, city law prevented same-sex couples from owning homes; now, about 20 percent of the subdivision’s residents are gay or lesbian. Homeowners are black and white, of all ages; a few descend from the families that built their houses. Just 15 years ago, most were East Coast transplants who wanted the urban life St. Louisans had shunned; today, natives are rediscovering the area’s charms. “I bought my house in 1989 for $121,000,” says Crouch. “I couldn’t afford to buy it now.” Barth says the neighborhood hasn’t broken the $1 million mark yet, but a house on Longfellow sold recently for $870K, give or take a nickel.
Includes: Accomac Street; Allen and Geyer avenues; Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Milton boulevards and part of Russell Boulevard. The neighborhood is bounded by South Grand, Shenandoah, Nebraska Avenue and Interstate 44.
Excludes: The nearby neighborhoods of Shaw, Compton Hills and Tower Grove East and South
Politics and Coffee: The neighborhood is home to two ward committeemen, an alderman and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan; you can eavesdrop on their informal debates weekday mornings at Shugga’s Coffeehouse-Café (3149 Shenandoah). After work, Heights dwellers walk over to Van Goghz (3200 Shenandoah) for martinis and hors d’oeuvres, then move on to Tanner B’s (2855 Shenandoah) for dinner.
In Deed: Back in 1893, Compton Heights’ original residential deed restrictions, the first used in Missouri, specified no more than one single-family residence per lot, a uniform set-back from the street, and a minimum cost per house of $5,000 to $8,000 (compared to Westmoreland Place’s $7K and Portland Place’s $6K). Those deed restrictions saved the integrity of Compton Heights during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, when large homes in other areas were turned into rooming houses.
Fast Fact: Hugo Maximilian von Starkloff, M.D., influenced medical practices from his office in the turret of 3153 Longfellow; daughter Irma S. Rombauer influenced culinary practices with The Joy of Cooking.
