Photograph by Chris Naffziger
If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it "Chuck Berry."
—John Lennon
Of all the early breakthrough rock ‘n’ roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers.
—Cub Koda
Years ago, while traveling around Iowa, I visited my aunt and uncle in the central part of the state. Due south of their house is Madison County, yes, that Madison County, and my cousin Ross was up for an adventure, so he and I hit the road to Winterset, the county seat. Besides possessing one of the most beautiful courthouses in the Midwest, the town is also home to the John Wayne Birthplace Museum. After paying a small admission fee, we toured the small house, where the famous actor only lived until he was about eight years old, his family then embarking for California. The tour guide openly admitted that, but nonetheless the house was interesting. The museum has since grown in size, along with its admission fees, but good for them, I thought. Winterset is a beautiful town, set among verdant rolling hills (and a couple of covered bridges), and if it brings more people and money into the small community, more power to them.
I thought of John Wayne’s birthplace and other artists’ houses I’ve visited around America and Europe recently when I drove past Chuck Berry’s old house in the Greater Ville neighborhood. The house sits vacant, among a tidy row of small bungalows. The Greater Ville is an oddly shaped neighborhood, more of an upside down U, wrapping itself around the Ville “Proper.” As is often the case, race explains the strange lacuna; the Ville was made up of African-American, largely middle-class residents living in old wood frame shotguns dating back to the neighborhood’s former life as a rural village, Elleardsville. The Greater Ville was white, and middle-class. For Berry to break through that invisible boundary into the Greater Ville was a big deal. In that bungalow, history was made, changing music forever. “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Rock and Roll Music” are just two of the dozens of revolutionary songs written within the confines of this small brick house. Over the course of the 1950s, from his home base at 3137 Whittier Street, Berry would spread rock ‘n’ roll around the United States. Before long, artists such as the Rolling Stones and The Beatles would cover his songs on their first albums, further spreading his influence to a world audience.
So of course, this being St. Louis, the house sits abandoned, poorly secured and in danger of eventual destruction. Since just 2008, when preservationist Lindsey Derrington wrote the National Register nomination for the house, the southern neighbor has been demolished. The Greater Ville has great potential, just south of Fairgrounds Park and close to major thoroughfares such as Natural Bridge, but problems endemic to so many neighborhoods have begun to set in.
While the St. Louis Visitors’ Bureau does a fine job of showcasing Chuck Berry in its promotional literature and website, and certainly Joe Edwards has done a yeoman’s job of keeping the aging master relevant, I can’t help but feel that the city doesn’t appreciate the rock ‘n’ roll star as much as it should, or anywhere near what other communities do for their own native sons. Is it really for the most obvious reason? Or is it that St. Louis continues to do such a miserable job of understanding its role in world history? I get so tired of hearing about riverboats. That part of St. Louis’s history is largely irrelevant today. What is relevant is rock ‘n’ roll, all over the world.
I caught up with Lindsey Derrington, the primary author of the National Register nomination back in 2008, reflecting on the house eight years later.
What do you think the Chuck Berry House should be used for?
I have to think that the best use for the Chuck Berry House is to have it be someone's home once again. The amount of investment required to qualify for state and federal historic tax credits is so small for this property that a good-willed developer could surely take it on and make the final product affordable for a buyer or renter. This is the place where a native Saint Louisan’s musical and lyrical genius changed the course of music worldwide, where he wrote his most important songs and practiced with his band. He built the rear addition with his own hands. That’s worth preserving.
What do you feel about the house still sitting there, abandoned?
Honestly, it’s frustrating to put so much emotion and effort into bringing recognition to a building this important while knowing that, although National Register listing would bring preservation review if faced with demolition, I didn’t have the personal resources to bring the house back to life. You get something listed, there’s a big splash of attention, and then, because there’s no developer backing the nomination, the building continues to languish. When I wrote the pro bono nomination, partly on Landmarks’ time and partly on my own time, it was vacant and owned by a company in Washington State. The building wasn’t secured, and you could just walk in. I spent an hour in the LRA’s office asking the receptionist again and again if we could just have the keys and do a community clean-up project to make the house more attractive to potential buyers; the answer was no, no, no because of liability. When I told her what the house was, though, she lit up because she lived around the corner and had no idea that this was where Chuck Berry had lived. That meeting didn’t amount to much but showed how special—and how unknown—the house still is within our community.
Why does St. Louis continue to have such a giant sense of cultural inferiority? When I stepped off the train in Salzburg, Austria, I was immediately bombarded with how its most famous resident, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, had revolutionized the music of Western Civilization. Cocky? Perhaps. Kitschy tourism? Definitely. And I’m sure there are music professors out there who would immediately counter that Ludwig van Beethoven was more influential than Mozart. Who cares? St. Louis should swallow its pride, and engage in a little more shameless self-promotion about its critical role in world history. Market the city as the birthplace of rock ‘n’ roll, and ignore the naysayers. Renovate the Chuck Berry House, open a museum in it, and start welcoming busloads of tourists from around the world. Or just get someone living there again to keep it safe, as Lindsey Derrington suggests. Make people visit North St. Louis to see where some of the most influential songs of the last century were born. Stop referring to Chuck Berry as a “local artist” and start calling him an international, revolutionary genius. And stop letting our contribution to world history slip away, yet again.
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at naffziger@gmail.com.
