Tour 4 

Kirkwood Road south, west on Monroe, north on Harrison, east on Way, south on Clay, east on Argonne - 1.6 miles.

Kirkwood Railroad Station

Mudd's Grove - 302 West Argonne

434 North Harrison

The Kirkwood Railroad Station:
As a symbol of the community's origins and as a splendid piece of the architectural style called Richardsonian Romanesque, this structure is indeed a landmark in Kirkwood. An earlier, frame depot on the site was built in 1853, the year in which the Pacific Railway completed its tracks from St. Louis and made possible a commuter service which stimulated the growth of the area's first planned suburb. The planning of Kirkwood was in fact based on the knowledge that such a rail link would be developed, and the daily life and routine of the early residents was shaped by the times of the arrival and departure of trains. Men used them to commute to their places of employment in St. Louis, women to reach the shops, stores and theaters in the city.

 

Because of that, the community for many years did not have a sizable commercial district. That, it was said toward the close of the nineteenth century, gave "its residents no pangs. They had a corner of the earth where living was cheap, where a man could tire himself walking around his own limits and within easy access of St. Louis." Such was the essence of the place.

The existing building was completed in 1893 by a contractor, Douglas Donovan, who found it necessary to sink caissons down through quicksand in order to obtain a firm foundation. Local tradition holds that any hope he may have had for a profit disappeared as a result of that, but he did indeed make the depot an enduring reflection of his own times. In its massive stone walls, its circular tower and broadly overhanging eaves, it forms a kind of late-nineteenth century anthem to business and transportation and a tangible reminder of the importance of those things to Americans of the period.

Time has bred some changes here. The turntable, located at East Argonne and North Taylor and used for locomotives which pulled local commuter trains, has been removed. So has been the interior partition which divided the waiting room set aside for women from that used by men. Major interior renovations, including the installation of knotty-pine wainscoting and hewn beams at the ceiling, were made in 1941 after local protests convinced the railroad that plans to demolish the building should be abandoned. Kirkwood remains an important stop for Amtrak rail service and is one of the few cities that has had continuous passenger service since 1853.

Kirkwood City Hall, 139 South Kirkwood Road:
The site of the Kirkwood City Hall has been used for municipal purposes for more than a century, and its history forms a sort of parallel to that of the community as a whole. During the decade following the incorporation of the Town of Kirkwood in 1865, the trustees met in private homes, at the school headquarters and in rooms rented for the purpose. Not until 1875 did the acquisition of a town hall seem to be either feasible or necessary. A building which then stood on Madison was then purchased from the town recorder to gain space for offices and for the "calaboose." Indicative of the state of things in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the town officials found no need for the second floor of the structure. It was rented out for non-governmental uses.

The growth of the community led to incorporation as a city in 1899, but the old town hall continued to be viewed as adequate until 1913. To provide a greater amount of space, and to overcome problems created by the physical deterioration of the old structure, a building standing on the northwest corner of Madison and Kirkwood (then called Webster) was acquired. It was ready for occupancy by the city in 1915, and the earlier town hall was then demolished, an event which symbolized the change from a small town to a modern community.

From 1924 until 1940, the Kirkwood Public Library was allowed to use rooms on the second floor of the City Hall. The original collection of some two thousand books was obtained through donations gained on "Library Day" on March 10, 1924. The library filled a real need in Kirkwood, and its collection grew to such an extent that it proved necessary to construct a new building on East Jefferson for it in 1940.

The second building to be used by the community as a center of governmental activities did not last much longer. Funds to erect the existing structure were provided by a bond issue which was given the approval of the voters in January, 1941, and through a federal grant secured under a program which was intended to create employment. Its design draws upon stylistic features associated with the colonial period in American history, an architectural form that has been extremely popular for municipal buildings because of its symbolic association with the origins of democratic institutions. The building was ready for use in December, 1942--the pace of construction having been slowed by World War II--and the former municipal headquarters was then razed. Kirkwood had taken yet another step into the modern world.

Turn right on Monroe.

115 West Monroe:
Representing a simplified form of Victorian architecture which was common in country homes, what has come to be known as the Henry Bopp house was probably erected at about the end of the Civil War. By that time, local masons had gained a great deal of experience in the techniques of laying brick in ways that created interesting patterns or details. That phenomenon is reflected in the nicely formed cornice of this building.

142 West Monroe:
Victorian residential architecture was generally quite exuberant in feeling, and decorative elements often reached a point at which the basic form of the structure became difficult to discern because so much "gingerbread" had been applied to it. Americans of the 1870's could on occasion show a degree of restraint such as is evident in this home built for John Hoffman in the mid-part of that decade. The sort of things normally associated with the Victorian style can be seen in the hoods over the windows and in the treatment of the cornice beneath the eaves. All things considered, the generally box-like quality of the exterior suggests that utilitarian considerations were uppermost in the mind of the builder, and that the role a house could play as evidence of the affluence of its owner was not here held to be of great importance. In that respect, it is a kind of three-dimensional document to be studied and compared to its more ornate counterparts in order to reach an understanding of the assumptions and the attitudes that were prevalent in the late-nineteenth century in Kirkwood.

Olive Chapel, A.M.E. - Harrison at Monroe:
Within the history of Kirkwood, only St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church can claim greater longevity than this congregation. During the decades following its creation in 1853, services were conducted by "circuit riders," ministers who also attended to the religious needs of blacks in other parts of St. Louis County.

The formation of the chapel at so early a date is suggestive of the importance of the black population in the development of Kirkwood. In 1900, there were 528 blacks living here, and they made up almost twenty per cent of the city's population. The number of blacks who then resided in the county was rather small, dramatic growth would not occur until after World War II, and Kirkwood was the home of almost one-seventh of them at the turn of the century.

The church at this location was purchased from a Lutheran congregation in 1923, and the chapel was then used by people from such widespread places as Meacham Park, Clayton, St. Louis and Oakland. It is scheduled to be replaced with a new structure.

Continue north on Harrison to Argonne.

302 West Argonne:
For good reason, Mudd's Grove has attracted more attention than any other residence in Kirkwood. It takes its name from Henry T. Mudd, a native of Kentucky (as was true of many St. Louisans in nineteenth-century St. Louis) who came to Kirkwood in 1864. He purchased this house two years later and lived in it until 1882. Surviving records suggest that it was built by John Hoffman in 1859 but, as is the case at a number of other homes in the area, the name by which it is known is derived from its most noteworthy resident rather than from its original owner. During the course of his lifetime, Mudd was one of the original members of the Kirkwood trustees and school board, a State Senator, the assessor for the City of St. Louis, a curator of the University of Missouri, and president of the Missouri State Horticultural Society. At the time he took title to it, the property stretched off to the west to include what is now Kirkwood Park.

The Mudd family moved into St. Louis in 1882, a reversal of the typical pattern of the time, and for the seven years that followed, Mudd's Grove was the home of Sarah and Peter Behr. They conveyed it to George Dana and it remained in the hands of his family until 1921. Tastes and needs had changed, prompting alterations in 1923 which made the old home a two-family dwelling. It remained that until 1941 when it was reconverted to a single-family residence by the Francis X. Muckermans. It is now owned and lived in by William Bodley Lane.

The record of Mudd's Grove is indeed one of change in response to fluctuations in the perceptions, desires and needs of its owners. Still, a very good impression of the original character of the home is to be gained from such features as the wooden window sills, the double chimneys and the gables, all of which show the influence of classical traditions in architecture, or the two-story porch with columns supporting a heavy, ornate cornice which is early Victorian in style. Such elements cause the home to straddle two periods of American architectural history, and it does so with a great deal of success. The one-story veranda, which runs out to each side from the original porch, was added by the Danas in 1902.

The smaller building which stands on Harrison was called a "gate lodge," but it is likely that it was erected for the use of the children living in the main house. Like the veranda, it is the work of the firm of Klipstein and Rathmann.

Walk north on Harrison passing 305 North Harrison and 321 North Harrison.

434 North Harrison:
While a local tradition associates this house with a man named Abrams, no record of his ownership of the property has been found and it has been suggested that he may have been a contractor who built the residence for someone else. At any rate, title to it was gained in 1878 by Charles de St. Aubin as trustee for his wife, Clemence. Her father was a landscape architect who created a formal garden with a maze on the south side of the house. He is also said to have been the designer of the octagonal playhouse in the yard.

Quite a number of parents in Kirkwood, including those at Mudd's Grove, provided things of that sort for the use of their children. The custom may have reached a local zenith when one family purchased the building which the State of Oregon had erected at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. It was a replica of Fort Clatsop, the post built by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the Columbia River after their famous expedition reached the Pacific. The replica was dismantled and then re-erected in Kirkwood as a place at which the new owner's daughter could hold parties. It continued in existence until 1913 when a fire destroyed it. The octagonal building on this property may not, therefore, be the most unusual of the structures which have graced the yards of homes in Kirkwood, but it remains as a piece of evidence pertaining to a facet of the lives of young people in the past.

Continue walking north to Way, turn right there and again turn right on Clay.

449 North Clay:
Henry Knierim, who opened a meat market in Kirkwood in 1889, had this home built shortly before his marriage to Clara Armentrout on June 7, 1893. Between that date and 1908, they had seven children, and cows were kept on the property to provide milk for the ever growing family. Barns to house such livestock were then common in Kirkwood, the Knierims being somewhat unusual only with regard to the length of time during which they maintained that practice. As one of their sons later recalled: "Pop must have been one of the last old-timers to keep a cow in town. There was still one mooing in his barn into the early 1930's." Tied though its existence may have been to urban St. Louis, such an anecdote demonstrates that Kirkwood did indeed remain a place with many rural qualities until well into the twentieth century.

415 North Clay:
Kirkwood's First Church of Christ, Scientist is the product of the twentieth century, having been organized by twenty people who wished to overcome the necessity of traveling to St. Louis to attend services. Development of the congregation was rapid, and the ground-breaking ceremonies for its first church were held only three years after the group was brought into being. Continued growth fostered plans for the expansion of that original building, but they had to be abandoned when World War I created a shortage of building materials.

With the return of peace, the firm of Trueblood and Graf was commissioned to provide a revised plan for the church. Their work was highly regarded at the time and for this structure they drew upon the styles which had been employed for churches built in rural areas during the Italian Renaissance. That seems fitting for a place that had only recently begun to take on urban qualities.

The four columns at the impressive entrance, best seen from Washington rather than Clay, are each formed from a single block of stone. Construction reached the point at which the first service could be held in December 1924, and the building was formally dedicated four years later. In a span of little more than two decades, the congregation had swelled to a size which made it necessary to incorporate an auditorium which provided seating for five hundred people.

Walk south on Clay, passing the Methodist Church which was built in 1963, turn left on Argonne and return to the railroad station.