Courtesy of Soldiers Memorial Military Museum
“It’s like a religious experience—it’s gorgeous.”
Missouri Historical Society president Frances Levine is talking about her favorite object at the new Soldiers Memorial Military Museum, reopening November 3 after a two-year, $30 million renovation, funded entirely by anonymous donors. It’s a bell from the U.S.S. St. Louis, dated 1906, displayed in one of the two original Art Deco cases inside the newly refurbished interior.
“There’s such a legacy of service of ships with that name passing down through the generations,” Levine says. And St. Louis’ legacy and connections, like the grand reopening’s keynote speaker—St. Louis native Brigadier General Jeannie M. Leavitt, the first female Air Force fighter pilot—lie at the center of the renovated memorial.
The building, originally constructed in 1938 by St. Louis architecture firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell to honor the St. Louisans who died in World War I, represents a moment in architecture when traditional forms met Modernism. Another connection: Gene Mackey, founder of Mackey Mitchell Architects, the firm hired to give the memorial a lift, collaborated in the renovation before his 2016 death. He helped realize his late father’s original plans of a water feature for the Court of Honor, built to remember World War II veterans, across Pine Street. The solution: the Five Branches Fountain and reflecting pool.
Courtesy of Soldiers Memorial Military Museum
For the facelift, the historical society also cleaned the plaster and metalwork, and brought the memorial up to ADA compliance and base-level LEED certification. When it opens, the original core galleries will display St. Louis in Service, an exhibit of nearly 300 objects. Included is a Spanish infantry officer’s sword made of Toledo steel, the type soldiers used to defend St. Louis during the Revolutionary War Battle of San Carlos in 1780. Another sword with a different story: a blade broken in half by a surrendering yet defiant soldier during the Camp Jackson Affair at the dawn of the Civil War. (Traditionally, defeated soldiers would have turned over their weapons to the victors.) More recent, Marine Sergeant Rocky Sickmann, a native of Krakow, Missouri, held hostage in Tehran for 444 days, lent the diary he kept and smuggled out.
St. Louis’ prominent manufacturing role in the war effort is also highlighted. A large image of engineer James Eads’ ironclad yards in Carondelet hangs on one wall. A gun turret manufactured by Ferguson-based Emerson Electric is also on display. For Levine, seeing a tag on the turret reading “These parts save lives” was particularly moving.
To protect these rare items, the historical society added air conditioning and modern heating. Giant translucent shades called scrims feature photographs of servicemen and women, allowing light in while protecting artifacts. Excavations below the main floor have opened a new temporary gallery space whose first exhibit focuses on World War I, including close to 100 objects, some never before displayed. On view will be a carrier pigeon message capsule and a German gas mask.
Lectures, films, and panel discussions on each special exhibit will be hosted in the renovated second-floor community spaces, carefully restored down to their original details, including the Vitrolite glass in the restrooms. (A specialist from Maplewood who worked on the Hoover Dam’s bathrooms helped.)
“The exhibits become an anchor,” Levine says, “but it’s the programming around an exhibit that brings people back.”
Visit mohistory.org for more about the November 3 reopening, set to begin at 9 a.m. The memorial opens to the public at 11 a.m.
