Design Agendas, 1: overview

I attended the exhibition opening on Friday, September 13, when Michael E. Willis and Eric P. Mumford discussed the origins and background for mounting “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s.” I couldn’t take in everything on display with the crowd of friends and colleagues present. Recently, I’ve spent several afternoons at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum examining the show before its final day, Monday, January 6. If you’re interested in St. Louis architecture and urbanism, seeing this show is a must.

Entry to the exhibit from the main hall displays a timeline of modernist buildings of note, bracketing the period with Adler & Sullivan’s Wainwright Building (1891) to Edward Larrabee Barnes’s 1010 Market Street (1981). (Photograph by Andrew Raimist)

The exhibition catalog will be available early in 2025. It can be pre-ordered online here: https://a.co/d/iQsx8X8.

The exhibition catalog can be pre-ordered online.

I was fortunate to join a tour of the exhibit led by Mumford last week for a sizable group of interested visitors. Hearing his comments on preparing the content helped me better understand the ideas behind its organization and content.

Initial impressions on entering the first gallery include a gorgeous model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kraus House (1950–1960) and monumental photographs of the St. Louis riverfront before and after the area was cleared for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. On the far wall, you see three of Eero Saarinen’s competition design boards (1947–1948). (Photograph by Andrew Raimist)

Much thought and judgment went into conceiving the exhibit, selecting its contents, and organizing its presentation. Special credit goes to Michael Willis for bringing his lived experience, architectural studies, practice, and research to this excellent show. Without the social, economic, planning, and governmental lenses offered, examining St. Louis’s modern architecture would be incomplete. A previous publication, Mumford’s excellent book Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University and Postwar American Architecture, 1948-1973, published in 2004, offers a focused examination of postwar architectural modernism. Although out of print, it can be ordered online here: https://a.co/d/5Kf4dMG.

Mumford previously addressed late 20th-century modernism in St. Louis and its connections with Washington University in St. Louis. The book can be ordered online.

If possible, I recommend reviewing Mumford’s book before visiting the exhibition to familiarize yourself with the buildings and architects you will encounter. Many works appear in both the book and the exhibition. In a certain respect, Mumford’s book could be considered an alternate exhibition catalog that provides added narrative and background context for the projects through its thematic essays.

This exhibit would ring hollow if it focused solely on design, form, and construction to the exclusion of the political, social, and economic contexts in which those projects were produced. This would be true particularly if it presented them as singular achievements of modernism and technology without the larger cultural context. Together, Mumford and Willis worked to present a compelling narrative of the simultaneous destruction and construction of the modern city.

Another notable exhibition addressing this period, St. Louis Modern, was held at the Saint Louis Art Museum in the winter of 2015–2016. It focused on design, interiors, and the decorative arts, with many superlative examples of works produced in the city’s milieu. The enlightening color catalog for that show can be obtained online at https://a.co/d/6v5QLYB.

The Saint Louis Art Museum’s catalog for the “St. Louis Modern” exhibit can be purchased online.

The galleries are logically divided into left and right walls as you proceed through the exhibit. The left walls are white and rectangular and present many of the large-scale community-level interventions in the city. This was an excellent decision. The right, angular blue walls generally display works of individual architects and particular projects that should be considered canonical for lovers of St. Louis architecture. We may quibble with the choices of architects and projects based on personal preferences. However, the selections are overwhelmingly convincing demonstrations of excellent works of architectural modernism.

On the left side, as you enter the Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery, you will see monumental iconic aerial photographs of the city, specifically of the riverfront depicted before and after its clearance for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s generally thought that few people were concerned about the loss of historic architectural fabric the district represented. In 1939, architectural historian and theorist Siegfried Gideon traveled to St. Louis to urge that examples of its historic collection of cast-iron front buildings be preserved. He argued their destruction would constitute the loss of a national treasure.

The Ivy Club was organized to preserve structures on the riverfront from demolition. This article on the organization of the Ivy Club was published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday, March 23, 1936. Alexander von Wuthenau authored several books on Pre-Columbian Art including Unexpected Faces in Ancient America: 1500 B.C.–A.D. 1500, The Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. You can view this book on Archive.org.

Today, it is generally accepted that the destruction of the riverfront was considered an inevitability at the time. Nevertheless, several people worked to preserve these outstanding examples of 19th-century buildings. In late 1935, St. Louis passed a bond initiative toward erecting a monument to Thomas Jefferson, and FDR signed a bill authorizing it. The following year, Alexander von Wuthenau, a German art historian and diplomat, developed plans to preserve select riverfront buildings slated for demolition. He organized a group called The Ivy Club, established to preserve early American buildings in St. Louis in the riverfront area. He provided copies of his plans to the Municipal Art Commission in February 1936 and left another set at the Central West End architectural office of Eames & Walsh Architects. Presumably, the firm agreed with the group’s desire to preserve historic structures. A question to be considered is whether Wuthenau, as secretary of the German Embassy in Washington, might have shared his concerns with Gideon and others in the mid-1930s.

At left is a massive aerial photograph of mid-1950s public housing projects: Wendell O. Pruitt Homes, William Igoe Apartments (1951–1955), and George L. Vaughn Family Apartments, designed by Hellmuth, Yamasaki & Leinweber Architects of Detroit. (Photograph by Andrew Raimist)

The gallery documents much destruction for the riverfront memorial, for public housing projects, of Mill Creek Valley, for highways, and other parts of the city’s urban fabric. These monumental gashes through the urban fabric became the sites for some examples of modern architecture on display. The uneasy hand-in-glove destruction by governmental entities enabled architects to develop immense projects like Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch (constructed 1962–1965) and Hellmuth Yamasaki & Lienweber’s Pruitt-Igoe Housing (1951–1955). To learn more about the Pruitt-Igoe project, consult Bob Hansman's Pruitt–Igoe and the documentary film The Pruitt–Igoe Myth. The books and movies referenced here should be available to borrow from your local St. Louis public library. The film can also be streamed through online services like Netflix, Prime Video, Kanopy, and CivL.

Site plan diagram of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing development. Initially, the Igoe Apartments were set aside for whites, and the Pruitt Homes were for Blacks only. The buildings were soon integrated following the precedent Brown v. Board of Education established, and the white residents generally moved out.

The conclusion of the Ebsworth Galley frames the view of the public housing projects between Fumihiko Maki’s Steinberg Hall (1960s) on the left and the construction of the Gateway Arch on the right. Also on the white wall beyond are black and white aerial photographs of Midtown showing images before and after demolishing the thriving historic African American community in Mill Creek Valley. The newly created Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority approved the demolition of Mill Creek in 1954. The land was acquired through eminent domain in July 1958. Demolition of the targeted 465-acre structures began in February 1959. The before aerial photograph dates from 1959 and depicts an intact, well-ordered, self-contained community with homes, churches, shops, banks, theaters, and many other services often denied to residents of the segregated neighborhood. The justification for its demolition was to eliminate blight, but many have referred to the idea of “urban renewal” as merely another name for “negro removal.” Clearing this part of Midtown opened up opportunities for developers and St. Louis University to expand into the “virgin territory” left. Many residents of this community had few choices as the city remained segregated. Relocating to areas in The Ville and the recently completed public housing projects were a few of the remaining places where they would be welcomed.

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, floor plan, with blue tones representing Design Agendas galleries. Enter first at #1 (Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery), then cross the main hall to enter at #2 (Garen Gallery). The main hall features a photographic timeline of buildings of this period. The informative, emotive documentary film “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth” is presented in the video gallery on the lower level. (Facade photograph by Andrew Raimist)

The exhibition continues across the main hall diagonally to the Garen Gallery, where the exhibit’s presentation concludes. This portion of the show is divided between left and right walls, just like the Ebsworth Gallery. The folded plate nature of the blue walls is particularly striking here with its presentation of groundbreaking works like the Climatron, significant contributions of the little-known Charles Fleming, the city’s first African American architect, and R. Buckminster Fuller’s concepts for the unbuilt “Old Man River’s City” proposed for East St. Louis is coordination with Katherine Dunham in 1971. The monumental structure could have housed more than 100,000 residents beneath an umbrella intended to allow for climate control. His proposal met with skepticism from local citizens and wasn’t ultimately realized.

View of Garen Gallery looking back toward the entry. To the left (blue wall) are sections devoted to R. Buckminster Fuller’s Old Man River’s City, Charles Fleming, and the Climatron. (Photograph by Andrew Raimist)

The exhibit concludes with an Epilogue on the rear wall of the Garen Gallery with a large image of the Gateway Arch, the Forest Park Forever Masterplan, and commentary on current planning challenges. Patty Heyda presents analytical drawings of the area around Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, including Kinloch. At the opposite end of the Garen Gallery are images of the original Minoru Yamasaki design of 1965 for Lambert’s modern thin-shell concrete vaulted terminal.

The Epilogue offers a cautionary lesson about the potential for destruction and revitalization of the city. It reminds us that the erection of visionary monuments can come at the expense of families, neighborhoods, history, and continuity. (Photograph by Andrew Raimist)

A series of small images highlights the conditions of Fountain Park, a beautifully designed urban center located a few blocks north of Delmar and centered on North Euclid Avenue. The neighborhood is ripe for reinvestment and invigoration. It is an intrinsically well-designed, humanely proportioned neighborhood with businesses, churches, and residences around the oval-shaped park. Its form and layout could be favorably compared to Flora Place in South St. Louis and become just as vibrant, beautiful, and well-loved. Meaningfully, the exhibit’s conclusion raises questions about the future of our city and modernism’s role in it. Places like Fountain Park and Kinloch deserve our community’s attention just as much as popular destinations like the riverfront and Forest Park. In this way, Design Agendas offers a challenge to the community to continue the quality work displayed while giving proper attention to local communities and their residents and enhancing their attributes.

Plat map of Fountain Place with a photograph of the Martin Luther King, Jr. bronze statue in a lovely setting deserving attention, enhancement, and investment. (Photograph of MLK monument by Andrew Raimist)