15 July 2015

Harris Armstrong's Graham Residence

This mid-century modern home designed by Harris Armstrong for Dr. and Mrs. Evarts Graham in 1941 is now for sale. This example of Armstrong's maturing style combining stone, brick, wood and glass creates a modern vernacular in consonance with the natural Missouri landscape.
View of entrance from southeast.
Click here for real estate information.
Armstrong’s 1941 design for the Graham Residence is architecturally striking in its variety of formal references, contrasting materials and attention to craftsmanship. The home’s overall simplicity in form and massing, especially when viewed from a distance, contrasts with a masterful attention to detail, manipulation of shade & shadow and use of natural materials. Textures, colors and forms interweave creating a natural palette with the intricacies of an ancient masonry structure almost on the verge of being overtaken by vegetation. The house is an Armstrong masterpiece epitomizing his ideas on creating a modern vernacular appropriate to Missouri’s climate and culture.

Armstrong's interior perspective.
From afar, the house is minimal to the extreme, but as one approaches, its richness gradually reveals itself. The choreographed circulation sequence offers layers of anticipation, wonder and surprise as one enters and passes through its variety of spaces.

The main body of the house is regular and rectangular with shallowly pitched overhanging roofs. The lines emphasize the horizontal reflecting and reinforcing the dominance of the surrounding prairie. The structure extends to the east and west with its main elevations facing toward the south (addressing the road) and the north (overlooking the Missouri River). The composition is strongly horizontal and solidly anchored in the landscape. The site offers the benefits of bluffs high above the river which overlook the low-lying areas of the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri in the distance.

South elevation facing Jamestown Road.
The primary exception to the home’s rectilinear form is the large angled stone wall leading to the main entrance and screening the garage and service yard. This heavily rusticated limestone wall screens the “service” areas of the house from view as one experiences the house from the standpoint of its long driveway. This solid mass is relieved only by the introduction of climbing plants and vegetation. A narrow vertical slot offers access to the linear service yard situated between the hidden five car garage and the massive limestone masonry wall. While the wall offers monumental facade, it is no veneer of stone set out just to impress the public; it is a full thickness stone masonry exposed on both faces.

Carefully composed entrance below organic canopy.
The entry canopy is a significant departure from the unsupported cantilevered roof which had been a signature element of Armstrong’s work during the 1930s. Here the entrance canopy is organic and emerges from the body of the house as a living appendage. Its pair of wooden supports are tilted and have vines trained to climb them. This wooden projecting canopy may have been inspired by the work of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. In particular it seems inspired by his design for the Villa Mairea of 1937–39. This ground breaking house blended elements of modernism with traditional Finnish construction and other vernacular formal references.

In Armstrong’s design, the roof and the overall house massing is emphatically horizontal and expansive. The most pronounced aspects of the fenestration are long bands of glazing. These horizontal bands wrap the corners offering the house a floating open aspect that functions from the interior as well as the exterior.

Floor plan as published in the 1940s.
The surprisingly spacious garage (for that time) is concealed visually from the drive, yet emphasized by its flat roof which contrasts the shallow pitched roofs over the home’s living spaces. The rugged limestone stone with irregular coursing simultaneously conceals and announces the presence of this portion of the house. The blank wall’s angle guides the visitor toward the main entry.

Dr. and Mrs. Graham at their home.
The construction of the house is relatively unusual altogether based on the home’s date. There was little construction going on at the time because a great deal of materials and labor was being diverted to the war effort. Dr. Evarts Graham’s position at the Washington University School of Medicine was as the head of the Department of Surgery from 1919 through 1951. His career as a surgeon and researcher was without parallel. He performed the first successful removal of a cancerous lung in 1933 and proven correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer in 1950.

Dr. Evarts Graham as depicted in LIFE magazine.
Many of Armstrong’s early clients were prominent in medicine. His Shanley Building of 1935 for Dr. Leo Shanley was the first International Style building constructed in St. Louis. His cubic modernist brick home for Nobel Prize winning couple Carl and Gerti Cori was designed in the same year. The Cori’s were associates of Dr. Graham at the School of Medicine. These works and associations lead to his commission to design the school’s Cancer Research Center in 1950.

Armstrong's award-winning Shanley Building of 1935.
The house’s front elevation which faces south presents a striking image. The contrast of dark and light surfaces is most prominent. The brickwork of the main volume contrasts significantly with the whiteness of the angled stone wall. A massive brick plane at right encompasses the main chimney and acts as a visual foil to the rest of the house. It beyond the limits of the interior space and was designed to standout from the body of the house. This wall divides the smaller spaces at the front of the house from its rear where floor-to-ceiling glazing wraps the living room opening the house to the impressive view of the river beyond.

Interior view looking north toward the Missouri River.
The home’s rear elevation is simpler than the front being composed almost exclusively of brick and glass. Sharply extending roofs hover over the two story portions of the house. The body of the house zig-zags from east to west and the roof follows suit. The view of the garage is largely concealed and minimized except for visual hint offered by the cantilevered roof extending west.

North elevation overlooks Missouri River.
The horizontal glazing is dramatic without clear expression of structural support for the brick masses except upon closer inspection. Steel columns supporting the concealed lintels which are wrapped with four wood cylinders in a bundle not unlike columns at Aalto’s Villa Mairea.
Greenhouse interior.
The attached greenhouse interior is striking its complexity and attention to natural lighting. His playful use of brick, stone and plants is evident. Armstrong focused a great deal attention on angle light would strike his buildings. He would have them photographed at particular times of day to emphasize the shadow lines which had been carefully conceived.
The design of the open framed pavilion beyond the screened porch at the east offers a dynamic outward thrust with commanding views of the landscape to the north, south and east. The photograph of Dr. Graham with his accomplished wife, Helen Tredway Graham, is touching in the way it shows the two of them ensconced by the timber wood pavilion framing them in the natural landscape. They were each major forces in the development of 20th century medical research and health advocacy.

Evarts Ambrose Graham and Helen Tredway Graham.

03 June 2015

Kinloch & Ferguson

I'll be presenting the largely unknown story of the long segregated communities Kinloch and Ferguson this Friday in Grand Center. My piece is part of the Artists' Showcase being held at the Public Media Commons located between Channel Nine and St. Louis Public Radio. The program will feature a series of live and multimedia pieces created just for this event. Check out the Facebook Event page for more details.

Advertisement for new suburban development, 1895.

Many of the white families who built homes in the "beautiful highland suburb" of Kinloch Park in the late 19th Century brought their Black servants with them and set aside a portion of the community for them to live with their families. Separate schools were set up for white and black students. The first school for Black children was a one-room frame structure, the Vernon School, built in 1885 which suggests there must have been a critical mass of families living there at the time.

The Vernon School was the first school built for Black children in St. Louis County.

In the early decades of the 20th Century, realtors devised a way to create a suburb for Blacks. Land  just West of Ferguson was marketed to Black families by the Olive Street Terrace Realty Company.

Here's an excerpt from an advertisement they placed in the St. Louis Argus dating from 1917 which suggests the mechanism for financing the transactions with the blessing of a bank.

Excerpt from an advertisement in the St. Louis Argus newspaper.

This practice was apparently seen as a legitimate means for investing in land development and profiting from laws which prohibited Black from buying property or obtaining loans.

Headline of an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about unique investment opportunity.

This practice was apparently common knowledge. It was known as the "Brooklyn Method" having been first developed as a means of selling land to Blacks across the river in Brooklyn, Illinois. A similar use of "straw buyers" was often used in St. Louis to circumvent restrictive covenants and similar limitations.

To find out more, please come to hear the rest of the remarkable story of this community.

24 May 2015

Is Kinloch Disappearing?


https://www.facebook.com/events/874900229247657/
This presentation addresses the city's fascinating history, it's present status and its future potential.
This multimedia presentation created by Andrew Raimist will take place in Grand Center on the next First Friday: Friday, June 5, 2015 at 9pm. It addresses the fascinating history of the city, it's present status and its future potential.

Please invite anyone you know who would find this presentation interesting. It's part of an Artists' Showcase at the Public Media Commons. Please check it out!

My piece will be one of many unique, creative features including dance, poetry, live action and other forms of performance that must be seen to be believed. Contributors to this event include: Diana Barrios, Leverage Dance Theater, DJ Raven Fox, Sarah Bernhardt, Caitlin Funston, Libby Reuter, Joss Barton, Alessio Summerfield, Mark Albrecht, Damien Johnson, Daniel Shown and others.

The Public Media Commons is located between Channel Nine, Sheldon Concert Hall and St. Louis Public Radio on Olive in Grand Center.

Image courtesy of Julia Christensen of ohjuliaann.com (also apologies to).

17 April 2015

Ethical Society: 50th Anniversary Lecture & Exhibit

You are invited to the Ethical Society's 50th Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, April 25 at 2pm.

Ethical Society, photograph © Andrew Raimist.
I will present “Ethical Society Building 50th Anniversary Celebration: Reflections on Harris Armstrong’s Design” shedding light on the architect’s creative process and the Society’s journey from its original St. Louis City home in the Sheldon Memorial to the current iconic mid-century modern structure on Clayton Road in 1965.   

Ethical Society Entry Hall, photograph © Andrew Raimist.
Preliminary design and models will be presented as well as the evolution toward its ultimate form. Armstrong's other designs for religious structures will be discussed as well as significant modernist religious structures designed by his contemporaries.


Ethical Society Meeting House, photograph © Andrew Raimist.
A reception will follow the presentation which is free and open to all.

project: Ethical Society
architect: Harris Armstrong
date: 1965
location: 9001 Clayton Road, Ladue, Missouri

16 April 2015

Steedman Architectural Library & Paul Hohmann Lecture

Tonight, Thursday, April 16 there are three items of architectural interest taking place at the Saint Louis Public Library's Central Branch, 1301 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63103. Phone: (314) 241-2288.

1 Steedman Architectural Library
Visit the Steedman Architectural Library. The room will be open for tours from 6pm to 6:30pm prior to the lecture. This room features rare and beautiful books on architecture and the related arts. It was a gift from George Fox Steedman and the room itself is a work of art. Here are some of my photographs of the room:


...


2 Architecture Lecture Series

From the library's website:
This month’s lecture in the Architecture Around the World Series, presented by the Steedman Architectural Library and the Society of Architectural Historians, will feature Paul Hohmann, architect at E+A Architecture and blogger at Vanishing STL, as he discusses “From Abbeys to Street Art – Germany and Austria along the Danube.” The program takes place in Central’s Carnegie Room on April 16 at 6:30 p.m.
From 6 to 6:30pm, visitors can step inside and view one of Central’s most special rooms, the Steedman Architectural Library. The group will then move to the Carnegie Room for Paul Hohmann’s lecture.

The event is FREE and open to the public.
You can see the Central Library's original post here.

3 Form + Function Exhibit

From some of the Steedman Collection’s most important and beautiful items will be on public display in Central Library’s Great Hall. The exhibit affords the general public a rare chance to view truly important materials and learn more about them. This exhibit will be closing in May 2015.


Link to the Library's announcement of the exhibition.

14 April 2015

MCM Bus Tour

On Thursday, April 14, 2015, Andrew Raimist, AIA and John Guenther, FAIA will be leading a bus tour of significant works of MCM architecture at the conclusion of the Mid-Century Modern Structures symposium sponsored by the National Park Service taking place this week in downtown St. Louis.

For anyone interested, it's still possible to purchase an entry pass for some or all of the three-day symposium which has just begun this morning at the Drury Plaza Hotel in downtown St. Louis.

B'nai Amoona Synagogue, Ethical Society, Priory Chapel and Kraus House (left to right).

Here's the official description of the tour from the symposium program.
The tour highlights significant Mid-Century Modern buildings by outstanding architects of the period for a variety of project types including commercial, residential and religious structures located around the St. Louis metropolitan area.

We’ll visit an immaculately restored Usonian house by Frank Lloyd Wright (exterior tour) and a thinshell, parabolic folded-plate concrete church designed by Gyo Obata, FAIA (HOK). We will then drive by a meeting house for the non-denominational Ethical Society by local modernist Harris Armstrong, FAIA, the B’nai Amoona Synagogue (now COCA) by legendary modernist architect Erich Mendelsohn and two structures by local modernist leader Isadore Shank framing the early and high period of MCM architecture.

29 March 2015

Ferguson & St. Louis Area Panel Discussion

This panel discussion brings together community members from across St. Louis and WUSTL to engage in a conversation that explores the important viewpoints, real challenges, and hard realities faced by residents of North St. Louis City and County. As a result, we hope to identify areas where communities’ genuine needs intersect with the University’s genuine interests, providing opportunities for the WUSTL community to both listen and reach out in meaningful and authentic ways.

Panelists are:
  • Umar Lee, Activist, Freelance Writer, and Novelist
  • Daffney Moore, Economic Development Directory, City of Berkeley
  • Scott Ogilvie, Alderman for Ward 24, City of St. Louis
  • Dr. Rance Thomas, PhD, President, North County Churches Uniting for Racial Harmony and Justice
 • Melvin White, President, Beloved Streets of America, Inc.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. All community members with an interest in the public realm, community development, social justice and related issues are invited to come and share your voice in this collaborative, interactive process. Along with tasty appetizers, we'll have large maps and other paper on which everyone will be invited to draw and express their own thoughts and ideas!

This event is the concluding public discussion of this series of events which included a screening of the documentary film "Spanish Lake" and a bus tour of North St. Louis City and County.


Series Description:

The Sam Fox School presents FOCUS: Ferguson & the St. Louis Metropolitan Region, a series of events that will address the complex economic, political, and racial landscape of North St. Louis City and County.

The events following Michael Brown’s shooting death on August 9, 2014, revealed deep divisions within the St. Louis area. The name “Ferguson” has become shorthand for the many problems and conflicts endemic to urban and suburban communities, not only in the St. Louis region but also across our country.

The FOCUS series will draw on a range of these questions and issues, investigating the intersecting—and often compounding—roles played by social and economic inequities, racial disparities, white flight, public safety, and housing and economic development. At the same time, the series will grapple with legitimate, thoughtful ways for citizens to effect positive change, with an emphasis on learning how to listen to, understand, and address conflicting voices.


Public panel discussion & dialogue on #Ferguson #STL urban & economic development

Shortcut link to event: http://on.fb.me/1BBzL3j 

#WashUVoices

16 March 2015

FOCUS: Ferguson & the St. Louis Metro Region

We will be showing the film "Spanish Lake" on Tuesday, March 17 at 7:30 PM in Steinberg Auditorium, Sam Fox School, Washington University in St. Louis.


                   "HOW FERGUSON BECAME FERGUSON."
                                –– Village Voice

The screening is free and open to the public. We will be providing complimentary popcorn and candy. The screening is the first in a series of events addressing current issues of concern in north St. Louis city and county.

Like Ferguson, Spanish Lake is a community in north St. Louis County which has undergone rapid racial, economic and demographic change in recent decades. The forces driving the societal changes in Spanish Lake parallel many of those in Ferguson. The most significant between them: Ferguson is incorporated as an independent municipality while Spanish Lake remains a part of unincorporated St. Louis County.

The film makes clear the important financial, governmental and policy factors driving these rapid changes.

One of the films greatest strengths is that we get to hear from individuals on the ground who made different decisions which resulted in the changes we see in the community. We hear people speaking from various viewpoints: White residents who remained or fled, new Black residents, Realtors, landlords and other community stakeholders. The Spanish Lake's history, intersection with the City of St. Louis, Federal and local housing policies along with other social and economic forces are dramatically and poignantly portrayed.

For a period of time following Michael Brown's shooting, St. Louis area theaters withdrew the film from distribution for fear that it might increase anger and frustration in the local community. In this sense, the film was censored from its planned local distribution.



You can find the Facebook event page here.

Please feel free to share this invitation to others who might be interested in attending.


13 March 2015

MCM Symposium in St. Louis

Mid-Century Modern Symposium in STLMO      April 14 - 16, 2015

As part of this symposium, John Guenther and Andrew Raimist will be leading bus tours of significant works of St. Louis Mid-Century Modern Architecture.

A few of the historic MCM buildings we'll be visiting on our bus tour.
This symposium will reveal the results of the “scratch test” done on the mysterious staining on the Gateway Arch as well as programs on mid-century modern preservation, materials, restoration, engineering,  modernism at risk, and the Gateway Arch and its evolving programmatic requirements; just a sampling of programs that all offer AIA HSW credits.





Flyer for the Mid-Century Modern Materials and Preservation Sympsium.

Among the speakers are Gunny Harboe, FAIA of Chicago; Bob Moore of NPS; Ann Dilcher of Quinn Evans Architects; Steve Kelley, FAIA; David Bright of Knoll, Inc. This is a remarkable conference, limited to 200 registrants. Tuesday night reception at Pointe 440 View (formerly known as the Pet Building), all ensuring a wonderful symposium.

To learn more and register, click HERE.

25 February 2015

American Vernacular Buildings and Interiors, 1870–1960

Talk:  “American Vernacular Buildings and Interiors, 1870–1960”

Date:  Wednesday, February 25, 6 - 7pm

Location:  Webster University, Winifred Moore Auditorium, 470 E. Lockwood



Herbert Gottfried, professor emeritus of Cornell University, will review the American vernacular building types, their history, and the forces that stimulated them. This talk will place Webster Groves within a national architectural context to consider the development of the city’s architecture and urban character over time.  The lecture series is sponsored by the Webster Groves Historic Preservation Commission and Webster University’s Department of Art, Design, and Art History.  The lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.