Modern STL

Location: St. Louis, MO

Website: www.modern-stl.com

Modern STL strives for the identification, education, preservation and celebration of St. Louis modernism.

Modern STL was incorporated as Missouri non-profit corporation in September 2010. Currently Modern STL is not a federally-recognized 501(c)3 non-profit although it is in the works.

Landmarks can be born instantly, and the path of modern architecture in St. Louis is full of examples of mid-century modern works that met instant acclaim and enduring affection: the Gateway Arch, the Lambert Airport Terminal, Busch Stadium and the Planetarium in Forest Park are the esteemed top of the list.

That list of loved modern landmarks, however, is already broken. By now, Busch Stadium has been gone for a half-decade. In passing it was joined to the Coral Courts Motel, the Southtown Famous Barr Department Store, the Morton D. May House and the DeVille Motor Hotel (later the San Luis Apartments) – all landmarks loved, cherished and oh-too-easily smashed to rubble in the last twenty years.

Even those that survive don’t always get treated well: the influential, nationally-recognized Magic Chef Building by St. Louis’ Harris Armstrong is suffocating under unbecoming metal siding in use as U-Haul storage facility. Lesser works can get worse, and die unrecorded.

Certainly, we have our work cut out for us.
However, advocates of preserving St. Louis’ mid-century modern architecture are entering a golden era of public interest and awareness. We never lost the respect for the big name landmarks, so that is a factor on our side.

Another support has been the years of identification and advocacy that area historians and preservationists have done. We already have dozens of modern buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places, although the number is a drop in a bucket. Tax credits have fueled recent interest from developers, and that is a great thing.
Yet the biggest advantage we have now is time itself.

See, architectural fashion is a cyclical thing. When rows of Victorians in cities fell in the 1950s for urban renewal, many people thought they were ugly and dated. Within a decade, they were de rigueur for trendy urbanites and by now no one dares denigrate 19th century architectural art.

The age of acceptance for modern architecture is coming, because what is old will be new again. New eyes have already seen much to love in the zig-zags, streamlines, poured slabs and square tiles of the modern period.

The challenge is getting the wider public past perceptions that ranch houses are dated and “too small” or that a mid-century motel can’t be adapted to new use. Many of the arguments against preservation really are based on taste and style, since the modern-era builders of St. Louis generally built things as solidly as they did when Soulard was built out.

Time will bring things around, but the challenge is ensuring that the buildings survive as a layer of the architectural past as distinct — and as cherished — as the Second Empire and Craftsman layers we all know and love. Someday, a new generation of St. Louisans will look around this region for signs of previous periods of history. What will we leave them to find? Hopefully we will leave visible signs of the great flowering of modern architecture in the 20th century. Preservation is not a burden to us now, but a gift to the next generation.