Nature is wonderful stuff. I delight in watching the shifting strength of various woodland plants as they compete through the summer. I got to studying the mayapples of late spring, when the forest floor is covered with them. Each plant labors to create a single drooping fruit. Roots, shoots, fruits and all are mostly gone by July.
Mayapples in MayMayapple fruit
Introducing White Snakeroot
There isn’t much that first blossoms around here in September, but two exceptions are the goldenrod and white snakeroot. Both of these have the run of the place right into October, lining the edge of woods and walking paths. Their tiny flowers serve the vital function of providing late season nourishment to bees, butterflies and moths. The only other reason to deliberately plant it might be that its bitter taste deters deer and rabbits.
“Architecture starts when you carefully place two bricks together. There it begins.”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
You build with what you have at hand. St Louis was geographically gifted for growth by sitting atop two dandy sources of construction materials – limestone and clay. As function also leads to fashion, you only have to stroll around Lafayette Square to witness the flights of imagination launched by architects working with bricks from fired clay.
The walls of a frame house left to nature will last about five years before beginning to fall apart. The walls of a brick structure can stand for a hundred. Old home preservationists get the benefit of a head start in St. Louis City. We often talk about an otherwise decrepit house as having “good bones”.
Manchester clay to St. Louis bricks
The area of Manchester Road that parallels the River Des Peres between Kingshighway and McCausland was a rich source of brick clay. Two miles wide and four miles long, a one to two foot seam of high quality clay ran east to west. This district was mined using shafts and slopes. Frequent blasting loosened the clay for easier removal. Brick factories developed as close as possible to the source of supply.. Called Cheltenham today, the area attracted Irish and Italian immigrants to work the deposits. In turn, clay mining and brick making helped establish both Dogtown and the Hill. These neighborhoods flanked the mines to the north and south. The mines operated from the 1850’s into the 1940’s.
Sketch of fire brick works, pre-1904, from “The Clay Working Plants Of St Louis.” As early as 1839, St Louis brickyards were turning out in excess of 20 million bricks annually.
“In 1849, the steamboat White Cloud caught fire and drifted into the riverfront wharves. A third of the city went up in the subsequent blaze. A hurriedly-passed local ordinance forbade the construction of wooden buildings, and St. Louis became even more predominantly brick.
Firebrick from St. Louis kilns proved suitable not only for buildings and streets, but also for sewer lines under the fast-growing metropolis. St. Louis truly was (and remains) a brick city.
In this detail from an 1874 Currier and Ives print, note the distinctive terracotta shade of the brick city.
Ready availability, low cost of production and transportation, and a friendly zoning ordinance combined to promote a distinct city architecture. Within this singular theme of brick exist striking variations.
Still a vibrant expression of the past
You won’t find such an array of styles within a single building material as you do with St. Louis City and brick. Pittsburgh and Baltimore might come close, but walk Benton Park, Downtown, Lacledes Landing, Soulard and Lafayette Square, then find another city like this. We take it for granted since it surrounds us like air and water – part of our urban environment.
On January 10th, 2018 Lara Hamdan, KWMU radio and Don Marsh presented an episode of the excellent St Louis On The Airseries that discussed Evens-Howard Place, an area approximately where the Brentwood Prominade is today. It was a vibrant middle-class African American neighborhood collectively engaged in fire brick production.
In a recent essay here about Augustus Eichele, the match king of Lafayette Square, his obituary mentioned his membership in the Rainwater Rifles. Curiosity roused, I plunged into a deep pool of Rainwater.
21 Benton Place in Lafayette Square dates back to 1870. Noted architect John H. Maurice designed it for Brevet General John S. Cavender (1824 – 1886). The new owner commanded the 1st Missouri Volunteer Light Artillery during the Civil War. He was a veteran of the battles of Wilson’s Creek, Shiloh, Vicksburg and Fort Donelson.
St. Louis has a rich industrial history, going well beyond beer, brick, lead and iron. It’s also home to a robust hot stove league, picking the bones in between baseball seasons. Here’s a more literal take.
The distinctive Four Courts building was St. Louis’s early center of civic justice. It appears in the Compton and Dry Pictorial map from 1875. The map also displays what looks like a circus tent across the street. Camile Dry drew in many quirky but accurate observations. Knowing this, I set out to discover what was in town there. That brought me into the world of P. T. Barnum and his great traveling Hippodrome.
In July of 1896, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a handy reference, meant to remind the city’s young women of their social and personal safety rules. Interesting that they all began with the word “don’t.”
Arcadia Ballroom in the 1930s. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A brief history of the Arcadia Ballroom
3517 Olive Street is a parking lot across the street from the St. Louis University Wool Building. A two story building stood here for years, beginning around the time of World War I. Originally the Dreamland Dance Palace, in 1915 it became the Arcadia Ballroom.
Mahatma Gandhi famously said “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” The history of St. Louis institutions holds some good examples of enlightened philanthropy toward early residents.
A reference to ‘speaking tubes’ appeared during a look at old real estate listings around Lafayette Square. Being from split level suburbia, I’d never heard of them.
