One Last Bloom: Blossom House

Blossom House: It evokes visions of a cottage built from orchids and hibiscus, like a lusher, less agricultural version of South Dakota’s Corn Palace. Once, St. Louis had two Blossom Houses—that is, houses occupied by a family named Blossom. The one in the photo above was built in 1852 by the head of a business college, Jonathan Jones, who evidently went into the wrong line of work; he was destitute by 1861, the year steamboat captain Chalmer Blossom acquired the house in foreclosure. The original building was a six-room frame-and-stucco structure with a tower (a fashionable thing in St. Louis at the time). Before moving in the following year, Blossom added the front section to the left, and in 1890 pulled the front and back sections apart to add a more “modern” area in the middle. By the 1930s, when this photograph was taken, the house was still part of the family estate but was being used as a preschool. It was eventually acquired by the St. Louis School District, which tore it down in 1942. (It sat on land that now holds the playing fields of Soldan High School.) St. Louis still has one Blossom House left, at 5331 Enright. Commissioned in 1910 by Chalmer’s grandson Dwight, it was designed by architect Herbert Powers in a simpler, far more modern style; though it has a handsome rounded bay, the most ornate-looking part of the building is the Spanish tile roof. The house narrowly avoided demolition 2013, when the owner offered it for $1 to anyone who could rehab it. Guy Slay of The Grove’s Mangrove Redevelopment Company stepped forward—and last year the meticulous renovation earned Slay another Landmarks Association Most Enhanced Award.