Modernism arrived in St. Louis at a critical moment in the city’s history. As it approached its 200th birthday, the future of St. Louis and how it would evolve in the postwar world remained uncertain. The rapidly expanding suburbs and the aging built environment left St. Louis at a crossroads; the city had run out of room to grow, its boundaries restricted to 66.2 square miles. Reinvention, if it came, would have to come to the existing city.
The new exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis Modern, curated by David Conradsen and Genny Cortinovis, explores how the Gateway City attempted to reinvent itself on those 66.2 square miles (as well as a few places out in the County). Beginning with the first stirrings of Modernism in the 1930s, the exhibition proceeds through the decades, culminating with Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch. What is striking about the exhibit is how apparent it quickly becomes that St. Louis was at the forefront of artistic creativity and innovation in the United States during the Modernist era. In fact, as witnessed by earlier landmarks such as Rumbold’s Old Courthouse Dome, Eads’s Bridge, or Sullivan’s Wainwright Building, St. Louis had always been on the forefront of architectural and cultural trends in America. Sadly, the city’s cultural relevance seems to have tapered off after Modernism. One wonders what happened.
Nevertheless, what makes the exhibit so engaging is the curators’ choice of objects specifically designed by famous architects and designers of Modernist buildings around the St. Louis region. Architects such as Harris Armstrong or Isadore Shank were not just architects, but interior designers, focusing on details as small as desk lamps. Below are some objects on view in the exhibition paired with their original homes in some of the region’s most prominent Modernist landmarks. After viewing the exhibit, visitors should then explore these buildings to better understand how Modernism forged a new identity for St. Louis.
Shanley Clinic, 7800 Maryland Avenue, Clayton
Harris Armstrong’s 1935 design for the Shanley Orthodontic Clinic in downtown Clayton opened the St. Louis region up to the possibilities of Modernist design in suburbia. Integrated into a sloping site, the striking white edifice also featured an interior designed by Armstrong, which the catalog claims be the first building in the region in the International Modern Style. From the museum’s own collection is a table lamp that exudes an almost anthropomorphic feel with its broad, helmet-like top that helps to angle the light from the globe-shaped lamp below.
Grant Clinic, 114 N. Taylor Avenue, Central West End
This relatively unassuming doctor’s office, sitting in the middle of the block on Taylor, has received an unfortunate addition that detracts from the overall appearance of the building today. But when first constructed, Harris Armstrong’s 1938 Grant Clinic aided in the revolution of medicine from doctors’ visits to having patients come into an office. Consequently, the whole design of the building was meant to give the feeling of a domestic space, thereby assuaging the fears of patients in this new era of medicine. Alvar Aalto’s 1932 chairs on display in the exhibit come from this building, opening up a new material for furniture: plywood.
Magic Chef Office Building, 1641 S. Kingshighway
That U-Haul facility just off I-44 and Kingshighway has a more interesting pedigree than younger residents of St. Louis might realize. At its height, the American Stove (later Magic Chef) Company was one of the largest stove manufacturers in America, and its success necessitated a grand new Modernist edifice. Designed by Harris Armstrong in 1946, the Magic Chef Building sits just north of its factory on the Hill (remember, I-44 was decades away from being built). Striking in its modernity, it demonstrated a new sensibility in office architecture. More a Corbusier-inspired office tower in a park than an urban office building, the Magic Chef featured glass curtain walls and a projecting, brick staircase tower. But the really magic element of the building was the daring, almost organic ceiling of the lobby, designed by Isamu Noguchi, whose maquette, already in the museum’s collection, takes a place of prominence in the exhibition. A masterpiece of Modernist interior design and sculpture, it has just been reported that U-Haul will fully restore and reveal the ceiling in the next year. A small victory for preservation thanks to the exhibit?
Lambert Airport Terminal
Sadly, due to the current state of air travel in America, the beauty of the main terminal at Lambert International Airport probably goes unnoticed by most residents and visitors. But the 1953 terminal nonetheless represents a moment in time when the optimism of the Modernist era spread to air travel. While the railroads had comfortably inhabited august stations in Gothic Revival or Beaux-Arts styles, when it came to air travel, it just seemed a little silly. While still evoking the vaults of Roman buildings such as the Baths of Caracalla’s main hall, the curving forms of the vaults at Lambert represent Modernist architecture at its best: the soaring concrete vaults seem weightless, while light pours in through huge, monumental windows which, as one stltoday.com commenter once remarked, “You don’t just pick up at Home Depot.” While the terminal still stands, an interesting lacuna to the building’s interior decoration has disappeared: a large, polychrome screen by Harry Bertoia that once partitioned off a portion of the grand space for a restaurant in 1956. One of the original maquettes, already in the museum’s collection, comes out of obscurity and into a place of prominence in the exhibit. But the mystery remains: what happened to the screen after its removal? Scrapped? Buried in a South Side landfill? Perhaps someone out there reading this knows.
Meeting of the Waters, Aloe Plaza, 19th and Chestnut Streets, Downtown
It’s unfortunate that despite being such a prominent fixture in tourism promotional photos and phone books, that people rarely visit the Meeting of the Waters. But when Carl Milles’ great sculpture group is examined, the viewer discovers the beauty of synthesizing classical forms and composition with modernist innovation. Two plaster maquettes, crafted by Milles, demonstrate the artist’s process of taking an idea and converting it into bronze.
The beautifully designed catalog accompanying the exhibition is replete with rare and fascinating images to complement the exhibit. Interestingly, the authors chose for the frontispiece one of the most infamous photographs of the Modernist era: a sweeping panorama of the recently demolished Mill Creek Valley, a vibrant African-American community, replaced with the Council Plaza development and Highway 40’s snaking onramps already in place—and traffic clogged—on the blank slate created by urban renewal. While St. Louis Modern functions as a successful, cogent summary of the high watermarks of Modernism in this city, that photograph reminds the viewer that the legacies of this important cultural movement are not uniformly positive. Modernism failed to successfully address many of the racial and economic disparities that were (and still are) tearing St. Louis apart. The lessons of failed Modernist projects such as Pruitt-Igoe still resonates to this day. In fact, 2015 saw the demolition of the final housing project high rise at the old Blumeyer Homes in Grand Center. And downtown at City Hall, it seems our leaders are making some of the same mistakes as their predecessors in the middle of the 20th Century. But perhaps that is what makes the lessons of St. Louis Modern all the more relevant today.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at [email protected].
