14 September 2006

Hampton Residence -- ENDANGERED

project: Hampton Residence
location: 1751 Laclede Station Road, Richmond Heights, Missouri
architect: Harris Armstrong
client: Dr. Henry E. Hampton
date: 1941
condition: in imminent danger of demolition

This home is included in a large parcel of land the city has slated for demolition to be cleared for commercial development. Although arguments were made by Architectural Historian Esley Hamilton and others regarding the significance of the house (architecturally as well as historically), the city has decided to proceed with condemnation.

Following is excerpted from the article by Esley Hamilton entitled "Harris Armstrong and Dr. Henry Hampton: An Historic Architect-Client Relationship," St. Louis Chapter Society of Architectural Historians NewsLetter, Summer 2006:

"Once again, an important landmark of Modern architecture faces demolition, this time at the hands of the City of Richmond Heights, which has included [it] in a TIF-financed redevelopment project. The house [which] is [located] at 1751 Laclede Station Road (at the northwest corner of Bruno) was designed for Dr. Henry E. Hampton by Harris Armstrong in 1941. Armstrong was the first architect in St. Louis to work in a consistently modern style, and he is recognized as one of the greats of St. Louis architecture. Several of his buildings are already listed in the National Register of Historic Places, including the Shanley Building at Maryland and Bemiston in Clayton.

Several of Armstrong's early clients were prominent physicians, including Neville Grant, Evarts Graham, and Leo Shanley himself. Dr. Hampton was a highly respected physician and surgeon, but he was also and African-American who played an outstanding role in the civic life of the St. Louis region. He was the first medical director at the Homer G. Phillips Hospital from 1937 to 1941. In 1949, he became a member of the board of freeholders which wrote the present county charter, and in 1952, he played a similar role in the creation of the Metropolitan Sewer District. As a patron of modern architecture, he was also a pioneer, commissioning two medical office buildings from Harris Armstrong in addition to this house. The first one, at 2328 Market was built in 1941 but demolished as part of the Mill Creek Urban Renewal Project. The second, at the northeast corner of Jefferson and Pine, replaced it in 1962. That building [was recently sold as of August 2006 and is slated for renovation.]

Dr. Hampton's son Henry Junior grew up in Richmond Heights to become a visionary filmmaker who documented the history of the civil rights movement in the series Eyes on the Prize, which won more than twenty major awards. Following [Dr. Hampton's] his early death in 1998, Washington University established the Henry Hampton Collection as part of its film and media archive."


To see more recent photographs of this home, click here.


Photograph courtesy of the Harris Armstrong Archives, Special Collections, Washington University in Saint Louis.

12 September 2006

Stuebner Residence -- overview

project: Stuebner Residence
client: Dr. Roland W. Stuebner
location: 5 Indian Hill Road, Ladue, Missouri
date: 1939
architect: Harris Armstrong
condition: no longer extant


This house was located on five acres adjacent to the Log Cabin Country Club's golf course in Ladue, Missouri. Unfortunately, this house was purchased as a tear-down, demolished, and replaced by a faux-Tudor McMansion.

This photograph was taken shortly after completion of the house (around 1940). The Stuebner's and subsequent owners continually improved the property with landscaping, adding trees, patios, large fountain, and other amenities. By the time the house was demolished in the late 1990s, the house sat within a well-maintained, well-planned natural environment.


Photograph courtesy of the Harris Armstrong Archives, Special Collections, Washington University in Saint Louis.

11 September 2006

Stuebner Residence -- living room



The view after entering the house and stepping toward the living room is surprisingly expansive. A corner window with an 'L'-shaped built-in brick planter catches your eye immediately. The fenestration clearly suggests sliding Shoji-type windows. The asymmetrical arrangement of mullions emphasizes this horizontal orientation. In reality, the corner is formed from two fixed plate glass windows with a double hung window at either side.

The mass of brick over the main hearth continues this suggestion of sliding forms, only here it appears as a solid, heavy form surprisingly floating over the fire. Along the base of the planters are perforations in the masonry allowing for heated and cooled air to be circulated within the house. The planter appears to have been slid out from below the brick mass to create the void of the firebox. In doing so, it formally, but subtly, relates the actual source of ventilation with a home's traditional heat source.

All of this horizontality isn't terribly surprising given the form of the exterior. However, the multiple planes comprising the ceiling here come as somewhat of a shock, particularly the double set of clerestories admiting light from above. This method of admitting light into the space creates a sublime mixture from the horizontal spread of the Prairie Style with some unexpected, hidden openings to the sky reflecting off the ceiling's angular planes.

- - - -

Armstrong's design of 1939 for the home of Dr. Roland Stuebner. The faceted ceiling allows sunlight to pour into the interior through clerestory windows. While the overall house presents a Prairie Style from the exterior, the interior layout and design is more eclectic in its sources than suggested by the overview of the house.

Here Armstrong makes the focal point of the living room the large corner windows. Characteristically, he places an indoor planter along the window, perforating the lower portion to allow for air ventilation. The relatively simple composition of brickwork relates the void of the fireplace to the base of the planter and the projecting rectangular mass above to the openings at the windows. This brick volume appears to be sliding to open the view outward. A low brick bench completes the composition as a disposition of rectilinear masses in space, akin to the formal inventions of the Dutch de Stijl movement.

The angular planes of the ceiling float above the horizontal soffit that ties the various elements of the room together. The light from above and contrasting geometry gives the house an unexpected air of floating and dematerialization. In that regard the vaulted ceilings and clerestory windows provide a clear feeling of a stylized sky. The brickwork, plants, fireplace, and view outward are clearly grounded and of the earth. The step in the soffit which divides the lower walls from the upper ceiling makes the reconciliation of such disparate geometries possible.

This house was located on five acres adjacent to the Log Cabin Country Club's golf course in Ladue, Missouri. Unfortunately, this house (along with its extensive landscaping, mature stand of trees, paved patios, and built-in fountain) was purchased as a tear-down, demolished, and replaced by a faux-Tudor McMansion.


Photograph courtesy of the Harris Armstrong Archives, Special Collections, Washington University in Saint Louis.

Stuebner Residence -- hallway



This hallway links the main public portion of the house to the series of bedrooms that extend out into the landscape in a horizontal gesture. When I walked through this space, I nearly stopped breathing. The design of the strip of glass blocks with the canted wall and steel column repeats Armstrong's design of the hallway in the Shanley Building of 1935.


Photograph by Andrew Raimist, 1992.