Preserving Kirkwood (MO)

03/31/2026

https://kirkwoodgadfly.com/kirkwoods-6-1-republican-majority/

In a Friday evening news dump the week before Thanksgiving, Kirkwood City Council announced that they would be parting ways with city administrator Russ Hawes. There would be no formal transition to a named successor, no transfer of institutional knowledge, and no grand send-off. Instead, the end fo...

03/06/2024

Did you know was kidnapped in 1925? Find out more by attending my free talk on Eames’s life and career through 1941. sponsors this special event on Thursday, March 7, 2024, @ 5:30 pm at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 826 Union Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108. Eames married his first wife here in 1929, and they were integral church members until 1938. Enjoy building tours, social hours, refreshments, and my slide talk. You can RSVP on ModernSTL’s page or by sending a DM.

Photographs from the Washington University yearbook, The Hatchet.
Newspaper clippings from Newspapers.com.

11/26/2023

“The Details are Not the Details”

I invite you to my special talk on Charles Eames and his career in the 1930s. Just as we find value in examining the early work of other modern masters such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright, we ought to study Eames’s early work for signs of his many later successes.

I will present my illustrated talk this Tuesday, November 28, 2023, at 6:30 pm. You can attend in person at the St. Louis Public Library’s Central Branch or in the live stream. Everyone who registers for my talk will have the opportunity to receive my recent essay studying one of these projects in great detail, which held particular meaning personally and within the context of his family, the Pilgrim Congregational Church, where he married Catherine Woermann on Friday, June 7, 1929, just ten days before his 22nd birthday. He became the church’s in-house architect and designer for the next nine years.

When you register for one of the limited seats remaining, you’ll get a PDF of my recent detailed remarks in several important Eames projects from this period.

Register with this link:

https://bit.ly/EamesEcclessiastical

08/03/2022

Interactive STL Architecture exhibition entitled “Coloring STL.” In this upcoming exhibits, visitors will be able to color black and white architectural images themselves on the museum walls!

In the interactive exhibit "Coloring STL," visitors will learn the stories of local structures in a way they never have before—by coloring them, right on the walls of the museum.

08/01/2022

On Thursday, September 1, I will be presenting photographs of midcentury modern architecture at the Missouri History Museum. I will introduce the midecentury era musical entertainment by the Gaslight Squares. 🎶

Join us as we celebrate the style of midcentury St. Louis with a night of education and entertainment.

06/04/2022

This mid-century modern house in Kirkwood designed by Harris Armstrong is on the market. It's small but truly wonderful.

Harris Armstrong St. Louis Modern Architect

04/23/2022

Andrew Raimist be presenting "Becoming Charles Eames: St. Louis (1930–1938)" on Tuesday 26 April 2022 at 6:30 p.m. as part of the online lecture series sponsored by the Steedman Architectural Library and the Society of Architectural Historians, St. Louis Chapter.

This presentation challenges the accepted narrative of Charles Eames's career and life in St. Louis. Preregister for the Zoom presentation by clicking REGISTER on the St. Louis Public Library page:

https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/events/61f31e8113e56b37002e2f9d

Andrew Raimist, Architect
Saint Louis, Missouri
[email protected]

06/20/2021

There's a 1951 Harris Armstrong-designed house for sale in Kirkwood. The Open House is Sunday, June 20 from 1 to 3 pm.

http://andrewraimist.com/2021/06/1951-armstrong-designed-kirkwood-home.html

12/28/2020

Here's a link to a detailed article about the mid-century modern neighborhood designed by Harris Armstrong at Woodleaf Court in Kirkwood.

https://makeitmidcentury.com/woodleaf-court-harris-armstrong-enclave-in-st-louis/

02/14/2020

Nine’s Mid-Century Modern in St. Louis Premieres March 5 on Nine PBS


St. Louis, MO — February 13, 2020 – A new generation of St. Louisans is taking up the mantle for preserving and telling the stories of mid-century modern architecture in the city and county. The new special from Nine Network, Mid-Century Modern in St. Louis, airs Thursday, March 5, at 8 pm.

Mid-century modern architecture and design is in the midst of a revival, as demonstrated by the two at-capacity screenings Nine will host February 18 and 19.

The mid-century modern style of design (from roughly the 1930s through the mid-1960s) is characterized by clean lines, organic and streamlined forms, and lack of embellishment. It reached its height of popularity after World War II, where it was used in residential structures, with the goal of bringing modernism into America's post-war suburbs.

Mid-Century Modern in St. Louis tells the story of how mid-century architecture represented progress by breaking from tradition and how the democratizing style had an impact on St. Louis for decades to come.

“What I realized through all of the interviews was how much modern architecture and thought affected our city,” says Kara Vaninger, writer/producer at Nine.

From Council Plaza's Flying Saucer to the Climatron, the Gateway Arch, and the Saint Louis Abbey and Priory School, along with the role of Washington University in St. Louis, the region became a hotbed of modernist architecture. Nationally renowned architects, like Ralph Fournier and Richard Henmi, are interviewed as well as historians and advocates of saving and celebrating modernist-style structures.

Photograph by Toby Weiss.
https://www.facebook.com/BELTStL/