Ethical Society photo by Andrew Raimist
Thanks to Andrew LW Raimist, AIA, there are St. Louisians who get a little choked up when driving past the U-Haul facility on Kingshighway. That’s because it was once the Magic Chef building, and beneath that vinyl siding (which is now painted with a curious argyle pattern) lies one of the finest Modernist buildings in the city. It was designed by Harris Armstrong, visionary architect, autodidact and subject of Raimist’s popular blog, Architectural Ruminations, as well as his forthcoming book.
While researching his book, Raimist drove around the city with Armstrong’s 92-year-old widow, Louise, making close study of Harris’ buildings and those of his contemporaries. A lot of them are under the radar, even with preservationists.
“I think there really are a lot of really great architects who worked in St. Louis,” Raimist says. “And I’m not sure how nationally known they are. In Chicago they say ‘Well, we have Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan and Mies Van der Rohe, everything that’s important,’ so a lot of people from outside of St. Louis overlook us. That’s partly my motivation in writing about Armstrong—to let people know that in St. Louis and nationally, he was doing some really extraordinary stuff that’s been forgotten, and a lot of it is in danger. Just in the time that I’ve been working on the book, there’ve been a number of houses torn down, at least five, six.”
When we asked him to assemble a list of this favorite buildings, Raimist approached the project with great thoughtfulness. Rather than choose the obvious list of “most significant” structures he chose to go with “lesser-known treasures of St. Louis architecture,” making sure that each could easily be easily accessed and appreciated in person; or take a look via the links to Raimist's Flickrstream below.
1. DeBalievere Building, 5654 Delmar Boulevard. Architect, Isadore Shank; built 1932.
“[Shank] used the unglazed terra cotta in the red, and then the glazed terra cotta in the black. And it’s kind of a hand-crafted thing, like carved stone. But then it’s very repetitive and industrial … So it’s got this Art Deco influence, which is more of a New York, East Coast thing, but it’s also influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, where he did these textile-block houses out in California.”
2. Cori Residence, 1080 North Berry Road, Glendale, Mo. Architect, Harris Armstrong; built 1935.
“When this was constructed, it looked more like the Shanley Building [in Clayton]. It was painted completely white … they let the paint wear off and it gives it this wonderful old feel. With the white paint on it, it blended everything together and made it a sculpture, an object. My sense is this is not at all what Harris Armstrong designed. But I think if he came back and saw it, he’d be able to appreciate it.”
3. Meyer Residence, 4 Deacon Drive, Huntleigh. Architect, Charles Eames; built 1936.
“Eames was this very creative guy who hadn’t really found his way yet. He wanted to do modern things, but he wasn’t quite sure—does that mean European modern? White boxes, flat roofs, Scandinavian or what? You can almost see how he’s struggling with all these different materials and forms. So for that reason and a lot of others it’s a really fascinating place.”
4. Louis Sullivan Ornament Collection, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Architect: Louis Sullivan; circa 1890–1900.
Richard Nickel, the Chicago preservationist who fought to save Adler & Sullivan buildings during the great raze-and-rebuild frenzy of the ‘60s and ‘70s, salvaged architectural ornaments off dozens of demolished buildings, and this is that collection. “I think most of it is in storage,” Raimist says, “but some of it is on display in the library. There was even a whole elevator, with all the decorative stuff done in bronze.”
5. Bee Hat Company Building, 1021 Washington Avenue. Architect, Isaac Taylor; built 1899.
“I first saw that building when I was a student and I thought, ‘This is just … the most amazing building!’ You don’t hear people talk about it much, but Isaac Taylor was a very important architect in St. Louis at the time. I think he was the head architect for the 1904 World’s Fair. The decoration is really wild; it’s got these gargoyle female figures, it’s just very unusual and my sense is that for most of the 20th century people ignored it because it’s not like the Wainwright Building, it’s not modern, it’s sort of traditional, it’s sort of Victorian, it’s heavy and dark … and I really love that.”
6. Allard Residence, 4012 Juniata Avenue. Architect, Adrian Luchini, with Andrew Raimist; built 2005.
This house sits in a quiet South City neighborhood, and has definitely inspired some rubbernecking. “It was kind of a weird project in the sense that it was a single guy who wanted a totally low-cost house, everything basic, two-by-fours, vinyl siding,” Raimist explains. “The point was to show you could build a good and excellently-designed house and not spend a fortune.”
7. Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, 4712 Clifton Avenue. Architects, Charles Nagle and Fred Dunn; built 1939.
“This was the first modern church built in St. Louis. It was in this working class neighborhood. The thing that’s most amazing are these stained-glass windows. They’re based around religious themes, but they’re almost Social Realism—there are all these images of workmen and the evil bosses. There’s one window that’s a pun on the architects’ names … I guess in German, ‘Nagel’ means ‘nail’ and ‘Dunn’ is ‘hammer,’ so they made this design that was a hammer and a nail, it was like a hidden thing.”
8. Evens Residence, 9999 Litzsinger Road. Architect, Harris Armstrong; built 1954.
“It has this kind of butterfly roof, a V-shape … it’s designed totally around the idea of being a passive solar house. Armstrong basically had an unlimited budget, so everything’s done with stone and terrazzo, but it’s not overdone at all. There’s a beautiful spiral staircase, but it’s very understated, a big fireplace with a curved stone wall. It’s set way back on what looks like a golf course, there’s big stone pillars when you enter, a five-car garage, a built-in shuffleboard floor on the lower level … basically anything you could ever want.”
9. Ethical Society Meeting Hall, 9001 Ladue Road. Architect, Harris Armstrong; built 1961.
“From the outside, you just see there’s some kind of trellis and some glass, and it’s sort of like a pagoda and it’s dark, and there’s columns. Then you go inside, and you’re like—whoa. There’s this explosion of color. And it’s totally abstract, it’s just colored pieces of glass, there’s no inscriptions or carvings or faces or anything like that … in the center is a square room that doesn’t have any windows at all. It has one skylight which is the top of the spire, and that’s it. The top part of it lets light down, and it has these huge beams that go up there. It’s very simple, very contemplative, very modern.”
10. Russell and Ruth Kraus Residence, Ballas Road, Kirkwood, Mo. Architect, Frank Lloyd Wright; built 1951.
“Mr. Kraus is still alive—he’s in his ‘90s. I met him 10 years ago, before they did any renovation to the house. He wrote a letter to Frank Lloyd Wright, and thought he’d never write back, and he designed a whole house for him. It was a labor of love. Kraus devoted his whole life to that house, and to his wife. He built all the furniture. Wright had sketched up things, and Kraus built them according to the sketches, some of it was based on things from other Wright houses, he did all of the stained glass … when they moved in, it was just a brick shell with plastic over the windows. And he just worked on building it for 50 years.”
11. Griffin Residence, 705 Saint Louis Avenue, Edwardsville, Ill. Architect, Walter Burley Griffin; built 1910.
“I don’t know why … people don’t talk about this house. Griffin was a guy who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. People think of him as this Prairie-style architect who did Wright-style sort of stuff, but he and his wife both were incredibly creative, talented architects. This is a house he designed for his brother, Ralph Griffin, so it was a very personal thing … it’s just got really amazing construction, details, design.”
