Well, then. The Compton Heights (and Compton Hill) House Tour was back with a vengeance this year, after an apparent four-year hiatus. It’s the season for house tours, as evidenced by the bevy of these events lined up in the spring season. And apparently, this year’s house tour in Compton Heights saw close to 4,000 people in attendance. Lines wrapped their way down the front driveway of the Magic Chef Mansion on Russell, as well as other grand homes around the corner on Hawthorne and Longfellow.
I’ve written about Julius Pitzman, the great German-American surveyor and his influence on St. Louis in the past, but I always feel that despite the numerous private streets he designed, Compton Heights embodies the genius of its creator much more so than the others. The restrictions on housing stock are perhaps the most interesting legacy on the architecture and placement of the stately mansions that line the street. Despite dating from the late 19th Century, Compton Heights is decidedly modern. There are no alleys, and the carriage and later automobile garages are located past the porte-cochère entrances in the back of the lots via driveways. Houses, and only houses, had to sit within expressed confines—not too close to the street or to their neighbors. Likewise, the required price for house construction, $7,000, rivaled Westmoreland Place, and superseded Portland Place.
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Also, I get the distinct impression that this was the German industrialists’ private subdivision. While Germans lived all over the city, including the Central West End, there seems to be a preponderance of German-ness in Compton Heights. The Griesediecks called it home, and perhaps it was logical, with so many breweries located on the South Side and Dutchtown area, for Teutonic residents to have clustered here. 3137 Longfellow, constructed for Charles Brunk in 1911, even has an original ratskeller in the basement, replete with German aphorisms extolling the virtue of beer. Upstairs in the dining room, a carefully restored wall painting shows a decidedly Northern European forest scene, complete with small castles dotting the mountaintops.
Lines were long this year, perhaps due to the tour being the first one in four years, and hundreds people at one point were queued up in front of the Magic Chef Mansion. Other houses required a fairly long wait time as well, though of course that provided the opportunity to carefully study the beautiful terracotta and brickwork of the houses. Sometimes, a very long time to enjoy the craftsmanship. At one point, a bagpiper serenaded the crowd with a rendition of an ABBA song. People were in good spirits on Saturday, with the huge street trees blocking out the sun, and a cool breeze blowing through the neighborhood.
Several houses stood out among the ten on the tour for me and my companions. Ironically, one of the smaller houses, 1940 Compton Hill Place, shines for its layout and renovation. Not one of the mansions of Compton Heights, but the nearby neighborhood of Compton Hill, the house boasts a mixture of Second Empire, Romanesque, and Beaux Arts details. Inside, the light-filled stairwell stretched up to a skylight above the third floor. Original woodwork survives, but the third floor, once a servant’s quarters, was converted into a master bedroom suite. Looking out over the peaceful Reservoir Park, the house reminded me that even more “modest” homes can have a vibrant sense of character in St. Louis.
Around the corner, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the houses I mentioned in an earlier article about the devastation wrought by the construction of interstates was open for the tour. 3248 Copelin Avenue (perhaps one of the least-known street names in St. Louis, as it was almost obliterated by I-44) shows that even living within a stone’s throw of a major freeway can prove pleasant. Inside, new windows kept out the roar of the interstate, and one can feel the peace and quiet of the short, dead-end street. Upstairs, the owner took the blank canvas of the third floor and built a master bedroom complete with a tiled, elegant bathroom. Outside, a small fountain with an arc of water helps to create white noise in the garden.
There were numerous mansions on the tour this year, but by far the winner was 3505 Longfellow Boulevard, a towering Renaissance Revival home complete with a turret and plenty of ornamental terracotta in an almost perfect state of preservation. Designed by Ernst Janssen in 1897, the house’s style, while primarily French Renaissance, follows a common pattern of eclecticism so beloved by St. Louis architects at the turn of the century. Inside, the house’s public areas are lovingly restored, with rich, stained wood trim and wainscoting, reminding us that white woodwork gets boring after a while. (Wood stain should come back into fashion again, after decades of exile from American homes.) The family’s art collection, best described as 19th-century Orientalism, lent a strong personality to the decoration of the house. Ironically, I was most impressed with the creative renovation of the house’s third floor, which the owners have put to numerous uses; there is a small kitchenette, a laundry room, and TV room just below the eaves.
Variety is the spice of life, and I hope next year the hour tour features more houses east of Compton Avenue, which bisects the district. Interestingly, the oldest and largest houses were closer to Grand Boulevard, but numerous surprises await the visitor east of Compton, particularly on Hawthorne. I would love to see the inside of that Spanish Mission style house at the corner of Hawthorne and Milton Boulevards. And while the old German industrialists’ mansions from around 1900 are certainly amazing, there are smaller, more recently constructed houses scattered throughout Compton Heights. We’ll see what’s in store for next year.
SEE ALSO: Restoring the Magic Chef Mansion; The Richard Mutt Affair Meets the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition; Avocation: Restoration
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at [email protected]. He will also be leading a tour of the St. Louis Place Neighborhood, which he has written about extensively (see here, here, here, and here) on Saturday, May 28, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Visit the Facebook event page for all the details.
Readers of Chris Naffziger’s posts are clearly fans of St. Louis history and architecture, so we’d also like to direct your attention to Invisible Buildings: Photography, Memory and Preservation, a talk given by architectural historian Michael Allen. Presented as part of National Historic Preservation Month by the South Grand Community Improvement District, the talk takes place at Ritz Park (3147 Grand), on Thursday, May 26 at 8 p.m. The park sits on the site of the demolished Ritz Theater; the lecture will touch “on the ways in which we remember the lost buildings whose legacies still define our sense of place. Looking at examples from St. Louis to New York City, Allen [will examine] how photography has ‘saved’ many places from being lost from public memory, and also how it has helped make the case for preserving others.” The Facebook event page is here.
