Tour 3 

North on Taylor to Essex and return by Kirkwood Road - 1.4 miles.

428 North Taylor

From the railroad station, which is described in Tour 4, walk one block east on Argonne and turn left on Taylor, passing Old Grace Church now Eliot Unitarian Chapel (formerly Grace Episcopal Church), which is described in Tour 1, and the Kirkwood Library described in Tour 2. The stone section of the YMCA building in the 300 block of North Taylor was the former parish house of Grace Episcopal Church. Stop at Washington.

 

135 East Washington:
The rambling, frame structure has a history stretching back to the closing years of the nineteenth century when it was the home of the Orrick family. They sold it in 1910 to the Willing Workers' Aid Society, a group which had been formed to care for aged residents, and it took on the name of the Old Folks Home. By 1916, it had eighteen residents who provided about thirty-five dollars of the average monthly expenses of two hundred dollars. The organization made up the difference by appealing to the charitable instincts of the community.

A fire in May 1917 caused considerable damage, the necessary repairs being described by one of the residents at the time: "When done it will look like a 3 House--Big attic on top--House of Gables--Sand covered tar roof--Spark Proof. The lawn looks horrid--Weeds high, Grass--Old burnt lumber--broken furniture. Weeds and grass 2 and 3 feet high on all sides, back and front. Old paper, old gutter tin, etc. . . . As regards the Old-Old Folks Home---some of the board say that the contractor promised it finished by August 1st. Now he says September 1st--I say October. The roof is not finished yet."

The importance given to the appearance of the grounds in that set of observations is illuminating as well as very typical of Kirkwood. Many a family lavished attention on their gardens and flower beds and the charitable institution was obviously expected to fit into that mold.

The repairs and other work done in 1917 made the structure adequate for immediate needs. A decade later, however, an expansion in the number of people served by the organization led to the construction of a new home on South Kirkwood Road. It was completed in 1927, and the tie of this building to the history of philanthropic concerns in Kirkwood was thereupon ended.

Continue north on Taylor.

410 North Taylor:
Religious institutions were central to community activities in the nineteenth century. As the home of Reverend Frederick B. Scheetz, this building stands as a kind of connection to that facet of the community's development He was the second rector of the fourth religious congregation in the area, Grace Episcopal Church, serving in that capacity from 1880 to 1896.

425 North Taylor:
Built in 1865 by Isaac Warren, this residence was purchased in 1887 by William V. Byars. His wife has left a record of her impressions of Kirkwood a few weeks before the family moved from their former house in St. Louis: "I went out to see the place and they were so kind to me that I felt more at home there than I do here. We have trees in the yard and a few grapes and raspberries and good cistern water."

Byars was an author of articles for newspapers that were amazing both for their scope of subject matter and for their number. In many instances, he used pen-names to disguise the fact that he had written a high percentage of the material in a particular issue. Under his own name, he compiled a number of multi-volume series, such as The World's Best Orations and The World's Best Essays. His wide ranging knowledge is displayed in the fact that he was capable of creating his own translation of an Old Norse epic. It was, to be sure, far easier in his day to establish a reputation as an authority in wide-ranging fields than it is in ours for his was indeed a simpler world. Byars remains, nonetheless, a remarkable and fascinating man.

The role that his children (there were fourteen in all) played in education is not, in view of his career, too surprising. Two daughters, Blanche and Katherine, were particularly active in that field, and they founded the Hanover School at 427 North Taylor on land given them by their parents in 1911. One of the many excellent private schools which came into being in Kirkwood, it remained in operation until 1929.

The growth of the family caused the Byars to make several additions to the house. The bay window and covered porch at the front date from the early 1890's, and the two-story addition which provided space for a library and a bedroom was constructed in 1899 at a cost of $534.

428 North Taylor:
The Bodley family was quite prominent in Kirkwood and this was one of a number of residences associated with them. Mrs. William T. Essex inherited it from her sister, Miriam Bodley, in 1886. She and her husband thereupon made what must have been one of the shortest moves in local history, from 425 North Taylor to this building.

William Essex was one of the original trustees of the town after its incorporation in 1865. Such a role in the community was not free from controversy or conflict. During 1877, Essex and two other trustees walked out of a meeting at which the six members of the board divided evenly on the question of the election of a town clerk. The marshal was ordered to arrest all three, but an amicable solution was finally reached. Although Essex was thereafter named chairman of the group, the incident affords clear evidence of the fervor with which Kirkwoodians treated town affairs.

Mrs. Essex was responsible for the organization of the community's first Sunday School for blacks prior to the Civil War. She remained a resident of this home until her death in 1911. It then was purchased by an individual who became associated with the most important of Kirkwood's physical assets, its trees.

Anton Lindahl, a native of Sweden, came here to take on the newly created position of city forester. He thereby became responsible for what had been described at the close of the nineteenth century as "the pride of Kirkwood, her foliage. There are not many western villages that could even enter into contest with Kirkwood for beauty and plentitude of trees. They arch almost every street, in many sections meeting overhead and forming bowers of budding beauty in spring, of sterling shade in summer, of golden glory in autumn." That feature of the place was considered so important by Anderson Gratz that he personally paid Lindahl's salary from 1911 to 1915.

The porches at the front and on the north side were added in 1937 and the sun room to the south was built in 1950. Until those alterations were made, the building looked essentially as it had when it was erected about 1865.

500 North Taylor:
Ivy Lodge, a seven-room stone house, was built during the 1860's. It was later enlarged to provide sufficient room for the eight children of Captain and Mrs. Lorraine Farquhar Jones. Three of the houses across the street were owned by children who were raised in Ivy Lodge.

The early residence proved to be too large for the needs of its owners in the 1940's, and it was demolished. The stones from the early building were used in the construction of the existing, smaller house in a form of architectural recycling. The old fountain is still to be found on the northwest section of the lawn, and the entrance pillars incorporate the stone on which the original name of the property was engraved.

598 North Taylor:
Abram S. Mitchell, secretary of the Pacific Railroad Company and an early promoter of the development of Kirkwood, built a sixteen by eighteen foot log cabin on this site in the 1850's. Subsequent owners enclosed that small building and in a series of alterations and additions, brought the structure to its present form and size. Mrs. Charles Brown, during the 1930's, commissioned Beverly Nelson to undertake architectural renovations, and she also employed a locally renowned landscape architect, Peter Seltzer, to lay out a formal garden. She thereby continued a long tradition in Kirkwood of striving to create an appropriate setting for a residence.

The fact that the home was still in existence at the time she acquired it may well be seen as an example of historical accident. It had passed through a number of hands between 1856 and 1893, and seems to have been in rather poor condition at the end of that period. By 1910, when it was purchased by Laura B. Gratz, it had come to be called a "chicken coop" and she may have intended to have it demolished. Legal complications, however, arose as a result of the circumstances surrounding an earlier conveyance of the property to Emma Brent and "heirs of her body." That phrase cast doubt on her legal right or ability to transfer a complete title during the course of her lifetime because it bestowed an interest to any child born to her subsequent to her acquisition of the property. Had a different term been employed in the title which she had received in 1873, the fine old house and the remnants it contains of the early log cabin could well have been razed more than a half-century ago.

Return to North Taylor and continue north to East Essex, and turn left.

123 East Essex:
A persistent legend in Kirkwood holds that the brick used to construct this residence in 1932 came from the home built by Henry W. and Ella Cecil Bodley Hough in 1866. According to that tradition, Emmeline Hough decided that she wanted a smaller home but maintained a link to the older house by causing the original building material to be salvaged. If the story were true, it would offer another example of the re-cycling of building materials from huge houses which were typical of Kirkwood during the nineteenth century, but it does not appear to have any basis in fact.

While the old house was demolished at the time of the building of the existing structure, the bricks which make up its walls were not derived from the nineteenth century residence. That notwithstanding, it is the work of Klipstein and Rathmann, a prominent firm of architects in St. Louis at the time, and an example of very good twentieth century design.

Continue along Essex to Kirkwood Road, turning left there to return to the railroad station, passing the site of the Old Presbyterian Church on Adams and Kirkwood Road, an early two story building at 201 North Kirkwood Road and an early livery stable at 111 North Kirkwood Road.