Years ago, I went down to Room One in the basement of City Hall and looked up the building permit record for my house. It was interesting, even for a little tract house built back in 1910, along with five others on my block. I chuckled when I discovered that the style of my house was listed as “Modern,” whatever that meant 108 years ago. But I was fascinated by one little bit of information: Under architect/builder, the name listed was “Peterson and Sons.”
I realized right there in Room One that there was probably little to no chance there would be any information on this man and his sons, and I was right. Peterson, whoever he was, had too common a name for a city as big as St. Louis. And a builder of modest but solid brick houses on the South Side of the city would probably never be the subject of a lengthy biography in an architectural journal.
Stepping away from Mr. Peterson, though, St. Louis has a wealth of famous architects who have graced us with their acumen. I immediately think of Henry Hobson Richardson, who designed three houses in his famous eponymous Richardsonian Romanesque style back in the late nineteenth century. Sadly, only the well-preserved Isaac H. Lionberger House in Grand Center survives (although the Samuel Cupples House on Saint Louis University’s campus is an excellent example, by another architect, of the Richardsonian Romanesque style).
We also have the exceptional Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Russell and Ruth Kraus House in Ebsworth Park, an example of Wright’s affordable Usonian designs. And the German-born Theodore Link, the architect behind Union Station, gave us his own residence, a masterpiece of Shingle Style on that hidden gem, West Cabanne Place.
Simply put, St. Louis has been the chosen setting for architects whose genius changed the history of Western architecture.
That being said, I have always been partial to all those anonymous “workhorse” houses in the city, often duplicated by the dozen or even the hundred. When you look up the building permit, if there is even a name listed, it’s as anonymous as Peterson and Sons. In architectural history, we often label these houses as “vernacular,” meaning that they were designed and built according to pattern books or common designs taught by building tradesmen. For example, my house probably was not designed by a famous architect; it very well could have been composed by a highly trained master mason. I find it funny when city residents decry tract housing, because much of the historic residential architecture in St. Louis was built in tracts—although its builders were careful to slightly modify each house’s façade to hide the fact the interiors were identical.
Below, three examples of those mass-produced, anonymous houses that appear all over the city. They may not have a world-famous architect, but they still make St. Louis great:
Photo by Chris Naffziger
The Flat-Roofed Bungalow
There are lots of bungalows in the world, and we usually hear the term in relation to the Arts and Crafts Style (of which there are many great examples in the St. Louis region). But in this instance, I’m referring to the one-story houses of various styles throughout the city that are around 1,000 square feet, about 22 feet wide, and about 50 feet long. The Ville and JeffVanderLou have many in the Italianate style, and many are built in such a way that the basement is half above ground, with the kitchen originally downstairs. The heavy wood cornice, put together in pieces of wood, gave these little houses an air of style despite their modesty. Down in Dutchtown are hundreds of their later cousins, built from dark brown, tan or gray brick with glazed white brick accents. Everyone in St. Louis, even those of modest means, could own a house with high style. (There are two-story versions of these houses, but proportionally, I just don’t think they work as well as the one-story version.)
The Two-Story Second Empire House
Lafayette Square is deservedly famous for its three-story Second Empire mansions, but I want to bring your attention to another variant, the humbler two-story version. Contrary to what I was once told, the mansard roof was not a way or tricking the tax collector into thinking a house was one floor shorter and should be assessed for lower taxes. As its name suggests, the Second Empire style sought to evoke the high fashion of French Emperor Napoleon III’s transformation of Paris, which utilizes the mansard roof in abundance. The two-story Second Empire house has a certain panache that gets lost among its taller comrades. Look for these houses in neighborhoods such as Hyde Park or Benton Park.
Photo by Chris Naffziger
Gingerbread Houses
When many cities in America were building boring, bland, totally forgettable houses in the years before World War II, St. Louis was home to some of the most unique architecture in the world. Yes, as I was once politely corrected, Gingerbread is technically Neo Gothic or Tudor Revival architecture. St. Louis Hills—and all of those neighborhoods around it that call themselves St. Louis Hills—possess row after row of houses built in this style (also affectionately named the Hansel-and-Gretel house). Mixing zigzagging yellow and brown brick; limestone quoins, and terracotta roof tiles with chimneys, the Gingerbread style brings the Brothers Grimm to life.
