If you’re not sure what modern architecture in St. Louis is brag-worthy, there’s a new poster to guide you. The Gateway Arch is there, along with Lambert’s terminal and the Planetarium.
But the guide also includes a few sites that are notable because they failed or no longer exist: Pruitt-Igoe public housing, for one. The poster and history of these sites is part of an exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum called “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s-1970s.
It shows how midcentury styles followed architectural trends both national and international while affecting still-segregated urban areas. At least one was built to desegregate the city. Overall, the exhibition of photos, articles, models and artifacts show homes, religious buildings and commercial headquarters and monuments.
Architect Michael E. Willis says a synagogue designed by Eric Mendelsohn “is just as cool to me now as it was (to others) in 1946.” Willis worked with professor of architecture Eric P.
Mumford on “Design Agendas” at the Washington University museum. Willis says, “The task that this exhibition has here is really forward-looking, very future-oriented, because it’s telling people who may not know about this history and may not be known as a place where you would go to find modern architecture, to find it.” He advises visitors to the museum to see the buildings on their own later and understand the part modern architecture plays in St.
Louis. Early success W.
