ARCHITECTURE (Continued): Although the first two houses in Tiffany, 4311 and 4319 McRee (photo #1B) predated the Dundee Place subdivision, they foreshadowed the largely middle-class, single-family character projected by the subdivision's promoters. Between 1885 and 1899, approximately 107 buildings were constructed. Single-family homes outnumbered muli-family dwellings by well over two to one. Originally platted with fifty-foot fronts, by the time construction began, many of the District's lots had been reduced to a denser urban pattern of twenty-five or thirty-three front feet. With one or two exceptions, the 1890's houses were one to two and one half stories, brick and ranged in cost from $1,500 to $7,000. Although more than half of the houses were speculatively built and few were designed by architects, the early established practice of speculatively built contractor housing generally reflected high art fashions in home building, often with interesting effects.
The two homes constructed in 1885 (one of which is 4307-11 McRee) are good Representative examples of the District's Italianate buildings with their two over two segmentally arched windows, first story three-sided bays and wood cornices.
Among the most interesting of the 1890's homes are those built as "model homes" prior to the first Dundee Place auction in 1891. The People's Investment and Building Company, a real estate and construction company which the Scotts may have known about from their Kansas City experiences built all eighteen. Erected in groups of threes on Blaine, McRee, and Folsom in the blocks adjacent to Tower Grove Avenue, the homes were all two-story, two or three bay brick. Exterior styling varied from group to group and demonstrated such features as gabled and hipped roofs, ornamental brick and terra cotta work, enriched wood cornices and decorative millwork, multi-planar facades and bay windows. (Photos #5B and 10B).
The flat-roofed, multi-family building which makes up the largest percentage of the District's housing after 1900 first appeared in Dundee Place in 1893 at 4117-21 Blaine (Photo #7B at left). Terra cotta, traditionally employed for ornament on St. Louis' late-nineteenth and early twentieth Century buildings, forms a band at the cornice. (Terra cotta insets also appear on the building immediately to the west, partially visible in the photo.) Similar buildings were constructed in 1895 at 4111-15 Blaine (photo #7B at right). These flats all have separate front entrances for each unit.
The massive Liggett & Myer tobacco factory complex in the northern sector was designed by the locally distinguished architect Isaac Taylor in 1895; construction continued on the first group of buildings through 1897 (photos #11-13B). Taylor, architect for such well known St. Louis buildings as the Planters' Hotel, the Rialto Building, Peters Shoe Company and the Silk Exchange (listed in the National Register) enhanced the dignified red brick facades of the buildings with corbeling at the roof line. The only applied ornament was the large terra cotta star - in honor of the company's star-plug brand. The complex was considered the largest in the world and is a good example of St. Louis' late nineteenth century light manufacturing structures.
The number of multi-family units built between 1900 and 1909 outnumbered single-family houses from two to twelve families; four and six family buildings predominated. During this decade almost 200 buildings were constructed, a phenomenon attributed by the Globe Democrat to a post-World's Fair boom, but which seems more directly related to industrial growth and demands for workers housing. The 1904 World's Fair buildings however, did leave an architectural legacy which is visible in many of the post-Fair flats which display varying degrees of classical detailing and ornament. A common practice was disguising the ubiquitous flat roofs with such devices s attick windows, pediments, heavy cornices and psuedo-hipped roofs. Single-family houses such as 4240 Blaine also have abandoned picturesque profiles for more restrained forms with "colonial" porches.
The opening of new subdivisions between 1910 and 1914 along the southern boundary of the District rapidly filled up the blocks between McRee and Lafayette Avenues. (These blocks were part of the land sold by the McRees to Shaw in 1848 and later bequeathed by Henry Shaw to the Missouri Botanical Garden.) (Fig.2) The Additions extended south beyond the Tiffany District blocks and are now severed by the path of Interstate 44 (photo #20). Despite the construction of a number of single family homes in the new subdivisions, construction of multi-family dwellings surpassed that of single-family homes by a ratio of almost four to one.
During this period, builders and architects working in the District kept abreast of changing architectural styles and responded to influences of the Arts and Crafts and Bungalow movements gaining popularity across the nation. Although many of the houses rise a full two stories they adopt generic bungaloid traits such as broad half-timbered gables, large scale brackets, porches extending across the facades, exposed rafters, and Prairie/Craftsman multi-light windows. The work of contractor Sam Koplar, who built extensively along Lafayette Avenue (photos #22, 29B & 30B), prompted the Globe-Democrat to observe that "this neighborhood is taking on quite a bungalow city aspect since the bungalows on Lafayette have been put up." The rejection of historical detail and exploiting of surface texture for aesthetic effect also spread into other areas of the District where new construction arose.
In 1912, a new building type was added to the District when the first three-story apartment house, the Marquette, was constructed on the northwest corner of Lafayette and Spring. Heralded by the Globe-Democrat as the only fourth three-story apartment to appear on the City's south side, the Marquette offered more amenities and services than the conventional flat. Planned with suites of varying sizes for twelve families, all the Marquette apartments were designed with sun porches, adapted for conversion to conservatories." A rarity on the south side, the "modern" apartment building was gaining fast acceptance in the fashionable Central West End as an attractive alternative to the burdens of single-family ownership.
In the final decade of building (1920-32), construction dropped from a high of 271 buildings in the previous decade to 141 structures. In 1922-23, the bungalow tradition of the Lafayette Additions closed with construction of eight, two-family flats at 3616-40 McRee. The District's one religious institution appeared in the 1920's. The Blaine Avenue Tabernacle was built at 4200 Blaine in 1927.