Photograph by Josh Monken
“It looks more like roof city than tree city to me,” sighs one longtime Kirkwood resident, as she laments the number of lots being divvied up into new houses flanking century-old beauties.
And even those lovelies are having trouble ducking developers. The latest to fall: the Tara-like mansion at 750 N. Taylor. The apparent winning bidder was a Glendale developer, who plans to raze the home and put up at least three houses and a lane in its stead.
“[Kirkwood has] strengthened their preservation ordinance from time to time, but they still need to designate larger areas as historic districts, so that they can regulate the whole setting of the neighborhood and not just a few individual landmarks,” says Esley Hamilton, preservation historian at the St. Louis County Department of Parks and Recreation. “Kirkwood, unlike St. Louis, cannot prevent demolition; they can only delay it.”
Kirkwood Mayor Arthur McDonnell, who lives in a landmark-designated home built in 1821, points out that the demolition of one century-old home often results in the neighborhood taking action. He cites the current effort now under way to get N. Taylor Avenue named a national historic district. “Even though a house that sparks it may be lost, it also preserves a substantial majority of the neighborhood,” McDonnell says.
Demolition isn’t the only problem. When the 9-square-mile suburb was founded in 1863, its original plan allocated only four lots in each block and no attached restrictions, according to Hamilton—meaning its large lots are easily broken up.
The fight to preserve the Kirkwood’s historic look is progressing, though. The size of new houses is now limited by the acreage of the lot. And starting this month, all plans for new houses will have to be approved by the city’s Architectural Review Board. “Slowly, we are trying to address all these issues,” McDonnell says. “Hopefully, we will.”
