More than 20 years after Emily Rauh Pulitzer’s Pulitzer Arts Foundation opened in Grand Center, the arts patron is in the middle of a new development. On Olive is a series of homes near the museum designed by internationally renowned architects such as Tatiana Bilbao, and in partnership with Steve Trampe of Owen Development. Pulitzer has been involved with Grand Center’s evolution for decades, having gotten started with her late husband, Joseph Pulitzer Jr., the former editor and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an avid collector of art. Pulitzer has been instrumental in some of the city’s most notable public art, such as “Twain,” a sculpture by artist Richard Serra located downtown, and the torqued-sprial “Joe” by the same artist in Grand Center. Still, Pulitzer, who turned 90 this summer, didn’t think she’d ever dip a toe into residential development.
I’VE HEARD THAT ON OLIVE HAS BEEN DECADES IN THE MAKING. HOW DID YOU COME TO PURCHASE THE LAND THAT THE HOMES ARE BUILT ON? In the early 2000s, Vince Schoemehl was the head of Grand Center. It’s been the feeling for all of us since the beginning of Grand Center that we needed housing—you need people there 24 hours a day. He acquired Grand Center, the land on which On Olive is built. At that time, I was active on the board of Grand Center, and I got involved. When the economy crashed in 2008, Vince turned to something else. And that was the end of that. About five years ago, I was at a Grand Center meeting, and the head of the finance committee said, “We’re going to sell that property, because we can no longer pay the interest on the bank loan.” [Laughs] She sort of facetiously said, “Why don’t you buy it?” And I thought about it. We’ve done a lot to improve this neighborhood and have a lot committed to it. To have just any kind of development go up there would have been disastrous. And so I decided to get it.
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WHAT WILL PHASE II OF THE DEVELOPMENT INCLUDE? There are two areas that are not built. One is the west end. We have worked with Michael Maltzan, an architect based in Los Angeles, on a series of connected townhouses that all face both ways, to the street or alley but also to the interior. And it will attach, on the east side, to the historic Wolfner Building, which has two apartments in it. [Michael] has done a great deal of housing, from housing for the unhoused to high luxury. And in both cases, really good architecture. On the north side of Olive, I chose one of the architects, Höweler + Yoon, who are based in Boston. Then we held two competitions, one for an emerging local architect, and that was won by Constance Vale, who’s the chair of the undergraduate architecture program at Wash. U., and the other winner was Cory Henry, who won the emerging national Black architecture competition. They have done the first stages of the designs of those houses.
YOU MET YOUR HUSBAND THROUGH YOUR WORK AS A CURATOR AT THE FOGG MUSEUM.He wanted to buy a drawing by Courbet. I was the assistant curator of drawings there, so I was the one who showed him.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF HIM? He was very distinguished. [Laughs.]
I READ THAT YOU DESCRIBED “JOE” BY RICHARD SERRA BY THE WAY YOU SAW YOUR HUSBAND’S CHARACTER: ELEGANT, STRONG, COMPLEX. When I said this to Richard Serra, he said, “Well, if that’s how you see it, that’s fine.” That wasn’t what was behind his naming of it. He did three torqued spirals, each different from the other, and he named each after a man who had been important to the development of his, Richard Serra’s, career. My husband, before we were married, gave Richard the opportunity to build his first permanent site-specific piece.
DO YOU FEEL LIKE WITH OTHER PROJECTS, SUCH AS “TWAIN,” YOU WERE MAYBE A LITTLE AHEAD OF ST. LOUIS AESTHETICALLY AND CRITICIZED FOR IT? ON OLIVE SEEMS MORE APPROACHABLE FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON WHO LIVES HERE. I’ve done so much in my whole professional life of bringing good art to the public. I think leaders in art thinking are ahead of the rest of us, just as in science. It takes time to understand and to catch up. “Twain” is about where it is in your relationship to where you are as mediated by this work. That’s not an approach that is expected by people when they look at sculpture. On the other hand, it’s not something that is so complex and highfalutin that you can’t get it. “Joe” is loved by people. It sets up a more obvious physical reaction than “Twain.” I think the most beautiful explanation is from an older man who had been in and out of prison. He was part of a program we had here, and he said: “‘Joe’ is like my life. I’ve tilted this way, I’ve tilted that way as I’ve gone along. And now I’m in the center, and I can stand up.”
