In February, Modern STL was set to hold a 50th-birthday party for Tropicana Lanes in Richmond Heights, where people would drink, bowl, and dry their hands with those funky air dryers at the tops of the lanes. But those diversions belied the real reason for the gathering: the building.
Each time they drive up to Tropicana Lanes, patrons are stunned anew by that oversized, vintage Vegas Strip–style neon sign and the bowling alley’s kooky, V-shaped roof. These remnants of early ’60s architecture place the building right in the thick of the midcentury Modern era, explains Michael Allen.
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
Mr. Allen is the president of the newly formed Modern STL, a group dedicated to preserving, restoring, and celebrating vanishing historic buildings constructed between about 1930 and 1980. Among St. Louis’ landmarks of midcentury Modern architecture are the Gateway Arch, the main terminal at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport, and the Planetarium in Forest Park.
“The midcentury Modern building can be identified by a minimum of ornament,” says Mr. Allen. “They also often demonstrate an experimentation going on at the time with new building technologies, especially the way they use metal and glass, and the many possibilities afforded by concrete. It’s a designation that includes styles from Art Deco to the streamlined International style to the new Brutalism, like the Pet Milk Building downtown.”
The popularity of all things retro, like the TV show Mad Men, may have spurred some fondness for these sorts of charmingly outdated structures, but that doesn’t mean much when a buyer wants to level a midcentury landmark to build a parking garage or strip mall.
That’s where Modern STL hopes to make a stand. Mr. Allen and his historic-preservation compatriots tried and ultimately failed to save the San Luis Apartments on Lindell Boulevard from becoming a parking lot. This new group aims to provide the organizational clout and the money to stage the legal battles that invariably result when historic preservationists oppose developers.
It should be noted that the two sides aren’t always enemies—Mr. Allen can tell you all about what happens when they work together to restore these buildings for contemporary reuse. “What seems obsolete one day may not remain obsolete the next day,” he says. “Look how we’ve turned grubby old, dead warehouses into retail spaces and condos.”
The midcentury era isn’t just about the smooth vibe of concrete swales and swank lobbies, either. “People really see something in these styles,” Mr. Allen explains. “You can feel a sense of optimism about American culture, a great flowering of American architecture trying to define the identity of the country, sometimes amid great obstacles.”
In the Modern STL manifesto, Mr. Allen writes, “Someday, a new generation of St. Louisans will look around this region for signs of previous periods of history. What will we leave them
to find?”
