As far as we know, the oldest residential buildings left in St. Louis were constructed about 1830. Due to the swift growth of the town and its expanding economy during the 19th century, virtually all remnants of the City founded in 1764 have been destroyed. By the 1940's, when these blocks were cleared, mid-19th century warehouse buildings from the City's second surge of development had already replaced the early town buildings. (An exception was the "Rock House" of Manuel Lisa, dating from about 1818. It was disassembled for a later reconstruction which never materialized.)
The early village of St. Louis was not, generally speaking, urban in appearance: density was low, and most blocks held only one or two residences with associated outbuildings, gardens and orchards.1 By the second decade of the 19th century, St. Louis was beginning to take on the character of a city. The size of its population increased dramatically in the late territorial period, as had its manufacturing and marketing capacity. Immigrants from the east and south arrived, and brought with them American house forms, which gradually replaced the earlier French style. The town's founders began subdividing the original blocks into narrow lots, thus accommodating many more buildings. The physical size of St. Louis, however, remained small. We refer to this period of St. Louis history as The Walking City, because the entire town could be traversed on foot in a short time.
St. Louis' physical development, like most cities, began with a compact urban core of residential, commercial and industrial buildings, with dependent rural farming activities in the surrounding countryside. Prominent city families had country houses in the outlying areas near the common fields, in addition to their homes in the town. Urban and rural housing are distinct in form and character, and evolve from different architectural roots. It is important to understand that most of the City which today appears to be very urban, was farmland until the later 19th century. As St. Louis expanded, existing rural housing types were absorbed into denser urban fabric. Occasionally an older building would influence the alignment of a street or the setback of a block, but most often the City and its new buildings simply flowed around them.
This section will discuss the evolution of both rural and urban St. Louis property types, focusing on the various dwellings of the urban core, and those of the rural areas, long absorbed within the City's expanding boundaries.
One-Room Houses
One-room houses represent some of the earliest structures built in St. Louis, and very few remain. At first these houses were undoubtedly made of horizontal logs or hand-hewn frame; remaining examples are constructed of manufactured lumber or brick. Those that still stand all have undergone substantial alteration.
Most one-room structures contained a small loft space above the main room, for storage or additional sleeping space, reached by an interior enclosed stair; an entry at the front or side, and one or more windows. The house provided minimum shelter: all activities, including cooking and sleeping, were necessarily confined in a single room. But it had the advantage of being inexpensive and quick to construct, and could easily be enlarged should the owner's fortunes improve.
The front rooms of the existing houses at 8414 Water Street and 2631 Missouri represent the original one-room houses. The house on Water Street has a shed addition on the rear, through which the house is now entered. 2631 Missouri had its door originally on the front facade; it was later changed to a window. Both houses were covered with wood clapboards.
Story-And-A-Half One-Room House
A variant of the one-room house type is the somewhat larger story-and-a-half one-room house, which has an articulated loft space above. Extremely rare in St. Louis, what distinguishes these houses is a line of windows beneath the eaves on the front facade, that provide additional light to the loft area. The walls of the house are also somewhat higher than that of the one-room house, adding more headroom and greater space to the second floor.
Although the house at 8117 Reilly has been covered with artificial siding, the appearance of the house is close to original. Of frame construction, the house has a low gable roof and front entry on the left, with a single window to the right of the door. Above, two small awning windows serve the loft space. The front porch is a later addition.
One-Room Row
A somewhat later variant is the one-room row, formed when several one-room houses are joined together with common walls. Unlike the other one-room examples, rows were usually constructed as rental houses. The row houses at 214-220 Loughborough are each comprised of a single room, with a door and window on the front. Each house is a self-contained unit, with its own chimney, and is joined to the adjacent unit by a shared brick wall. Although the buildings are simple in appearance, some attempt at decoration is apparent in the brick corbelling below the front parapet.
Two-Room House
A two-room house is created, in essence, by placing two single-room houses side by side. On the front facade, a door opens into each room. The doors may be the only openings on the front, or they may be interspersed with windows. Inside the house, another door allows entry from one room to another. This arrangement of two entries on one single-family house is traditional, and derives from vernacular houses in southern England. It was often used in log construction, and the custom carried over into later frame houses. All remaining two-room houses in St. Louis are frame, and like the single-room houses, were sheathed with horizontal clapboards.
The frame house at 8143 Church Street was built as a two-room house about 1850. It had a loft space for storage over both rooms, accessed from an enclosed stair in the room on the left. The foundation of the building is brick, with a partial basement. Two doors flanked by windows are located on the front facade, which is covered by a full porch. The two-story addition was constructed about 1900.
Hall-and-Parlor Houses
Hall-and-Parlor houses are related to the two room attached house. They also are comprised of two side-by-side rooms connected with a door. The hall-and-parlor house, however, has only a single exterior door, and the rooms are not equal in size. The front entry leads into the smaller room, or hall. A door from the hall leads to a private room, the parlor. The hall was used for a variety of purposes, including cooking, while the parlor was used as a living area and bedroom.
The house at 8308 Vulcan Street is an example of the hall-and-parlor property type. This one-story frame house has an entry placed slightly off-center on the front facade. Two rooms share a common wall with a central chimney, providing a stove or fireplace for each room. Although covered with siding, the house retains its original multi-light windows.
Central Passage House
The central passage house is a one-story building, with a symmetrical plan. The door opens into a central hall, with one or two rooms to either side of equal size. Opposite the front door, the hall has another door leading to the rear of the property. The front facade is also symmetrical, in that each room has the same number of windows, customarily on both front and rear. Chimneys were located at either end of the house. Central passage houses were usually occupied by middle class owners, and could be quite ornate in their interior and exterior detailing.
The central passage house at 2819 Indiana, in Benton Park, dates from the 1860's and is in nearly unaltered condition. The one-story brick building has low raised basement, a long front facade, and a gable roof. Chimneys at each end are connected with parapets, a detail known as a Baltimore chimney. A vernacular building, the exterior decoration of the house still looks to the Federal style popular at the time it was built, with a simple brick cornice, and stone lintels cut into a pediment shape. The multi-light windows are original.
I-House
The I-House was perhaps the most popular rural house form in the 19th and early 20th century. It was a symbol of economic achievement for rural midwesterners, and appeared in various sizes, proportions and architectural styles everywhere in Missouri. This house form is called an "I-house," because the type was first identified in the states of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa; it was popular, however, throughout the central United States. The I-house is similar in plan to the central passage house, but two stories in height. The entry hall contained an open stair leading to the second floor, which allowed the bedroom area to be completely separated from the living space below.
The house at 6002 Eitman, in Clifton Park, is an example of the traditional I-House. It was constructed when this neighborhood was far outside urban St. Louis. The frame house has a central entry, with two windows at each side of the door. Above the porch, the second story has smaller paired windows and a central door which once opened onto a second story porch. The door is set in a steeply-pitched dormer in the center of the front facade. This particular element comes from the Gothic Revival architectural style and hints that considerable "gingerbread" detail once may have adorned the house. The existing one-story porch is a later alteration.
The two-story brick I-house at 2223 Salisbury in Hyde Park dates from about 1870. The house has considerably more architectural expression than the previous I-house-an indication of its builder's prominent position in St. Louis society-but it displays the same basic floor plan. Although typically I-houses have gable roofs, this example has a truncated hipped roof with balustrade. The front facade's cast iron lintels and elaborate cornice follow the Italianate architectural style as does the delicate ornamental porch. The house has a large parlor to either side of its central hallway, with a fireplace centered on each end wall. This house in fact was built as an addition to the original house on the site, a more modestly detailed I-house, which can be seen at the rear.
Georgian Plan
A two-story, central passage house with two rooms on either side of the passage is referred to as a Georgian plan, so-called for its popularity in the American colonies during the reign of King George III of England. Georgian houses tended to be fairly formal and symmetrical, with a restrained use of classical detail, especially at entries.
The Georgian Plan house at 3324-26 Missouri, in Benton Park, was constructed in the 1870's. Despite its two-story height, the building is very similar to the central passage example at 2819 Indiana. It also shows the influence of the Federal style in pedimented windows and Baltimore chimneys with parapets. The basement is lower, however, and faced with stone, and the cornice is wood with incised ornament. The house has been converted into apartments.
Raised Basement Houses
Raised basement houses appear in a range of different types and configurations, all with their main story set on a high foundation, considerably above grade, with an exterior staircase providing access to the living quarters. The ground story of the building was used for kitchen or storage. The earliest of these houses seem to have been influenced by French colonial buildings, although they date from a later period. The remaining St. Louis examples of this property type were constructed about 1860.
The frame house at 3010 Wisconsin, from about 1865, has a high rubble limestone foundation with small window openings on front and rear. The only entry into the house is from a gallery off the second story. Above are two side-by-side rooms where, as in our two-room example, an exterior door leads into each room. This house is one of the oldest structures remaining in the Benton Park neighborhood. The house has been extensively altered. The sketch shows the building as it probably appeared when first constructed.
Galleried House
Galleried houses have full-length porches as their most prominent architectural feature. The French term galerie referred to the wide covered porches which were a prominent feature in the earliest French colonial buildings, and continued to be an important feature in house design throughout the 19th century, providing shelter from summer heat. Porches were considered a part of the house's living space, and were often furnished as completely as the interior rooms of the house.
The frame house at 3907 Illinois Street, constructed before 1875, is an example of a galleried house. The house's hipped roof extends out to cover a two-story porch running the length of the front facade. The entry door to the left and two windows are spaced symmetrically on the first story. On the second, two windows flank a central door. The house has undergone some alteration, including the addition of siding, but is substantially intact. Three of the original six chimneys remain.
The frame house at 4137 Ohio, constructed in 1841, has also received some alteration, yet its most distinctive feature-the two-story gallery wrapping both the front and south facades-is intact. In this example, the gallery is recessed beneath the house roof. The entry is at the right of the front facade, and two windows are placed to the left. The second story has a central door to the gallery. The house has had several additions, including a large front dormer, which later was closed.
Side Gallery
A variant of the galleried house is the side gallery. Typically, these are one-story or story-and-a-half buildings with a gable roof facing the street. The porch or gallery runs the length of one side, where the main entry to the house is located. Side gallery houses are usually of frame construction.
The frame, two-room house, at 3313 North 19th Street is one-and-a-half stories in height. The house has two windows facing the street, and a small round-headed window in the gable end. Notice that here again, there are two exterior doors-this time on the side facade-on a single-family house.
Shotgun Houses
The shotgun house is often found in older St. Louis neighborhoods. This vernacular building type is probably a Caribbean house form that was brought to the American south in the 18th century by Caribbean traders and slaves. The building type proliferated throughout the south, especially in New Orleans, and settlers brought the type north through the Mississippi valley. Shotgun houses are single-story buildings with narrow front facades. There is no interior hallway: each room leads directly into the one behind it. Shotgun houses appear in frame with a front-facing gable, or in brick, with a hipped roof. Examples from this period can be found in Carondelet, Hyde Park and Old North St. Louis neighborhoods.
The shotgun house at 8225 Vulcan, in Carondelet, is built of brick on a rubble stone foundation. Constructed about 1860, it is three rooms deep and has a low hipped roof, and simple corbelled cornice. From a low porch, the front door opens directly into the house's front room. The porch is a modern addition, but the remainder of the house is in close to original condition.
Although St. Louis was founded by French fur traders, and eventually settled by large numbers of Americans moving west from the former English colonies, the great wave of German immigration in the middle 19th century had a substantial impact on the cultural life and the built environment of St. Louis. Whether coming directly from Germany, or from previous settlements in the eastern United States, the Germans of St. Louis constructed their new buildings using familiar forms and construction techniques they had known in Europe. Although they also built in brick, the most distinctive forms of German house construction during this period are represented by Fachwerk and Coursed Limestone houses.
Fachwerk
Fachwerk houses used a framework of heavy, braced timbers atop a masonry foundation. The spaces between the timbers were filled with brick nogging laid in courses. Sometimes the timbers were left exposed on the exterior of the house; most often, however, the exterior was protected from the weather by a sheathing of wood clapboards. This construction technique most likely evolved in Bavaria, where there was a shortage of wood for house construction. The use of Fachwerk lasted only a short time, and was replaced by the more easily-built American technique of light framing. Isolated examples of these buildings remain in the older parts of St. Louis, such as Soulard, Hyde Park, and Carondelet; but since from the exterior they appear to be ordinary frame houses, they often go unnoticed.
The two-story house at 811 Allen, constructed possibly about 1840, is set back from the street, and is one of the oldest houses in the Soulard neighborhood. There are two rooms on each floor, a full basement, and a two-story side gallery. Doors opening from the gallery lead into each of the four rooms. A large central chimney provided fireplaces in each room. The only stair to the second floor located at the far corner of the gallery. Originally, the house had multi-light wood windows and a wood shingle roof. The house is shown after rehabilitation.
Coursed Limestone
Unlike the Fachwerk houses, the German stone (or "rock") houses are easily identifiable. These houses may be of several plan types: single-room, back-to-back, central hall), but all are built of coursed rubble limestone: irregularly-sized stone blocks laid in lines or courses. German stone masons were very adept at using the quantities of limestone available at St. Louis quarries. Often the stone was not of the first quality, yet care was taken to dress, shape and lay it in even courses. These houses are found east of Jefferson Avenue; the largest remaining concentration is in the Carondelet neighborhood.
The house at 110 Courtois Street is a German coursed limestone house. The two-story house is symmetrical, with a central door, two flanking windows on the first story, and three symmetrically placed windows on the second. The house has a gable roof, with carefully-shaped flat arches above the windows. This is one of the finer remaining examples of this building type, although its windows and door have been reduced in size.
"High style" buildings are distinguished from vernacular types in two ways. High style houses tend to be constructed on a larger scale than their vernacular counterparts, and their interior floor plan and exterior design closely follow established architectural styles of the time. Some are designed by formally educated architects and designers. Others owe their architectural character to published pattern books, that outlined the basic elements of a particular style. In the 19th century, this ordinarily meant an architectural style that had its roots in Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. Generally, architectural styles of each period reached St. Louis ten to twenty years later than they appeared on the east coast.
Federal Style Federal style houses comprise the largest number of 19th century residential buildings remaining in St. Louis. The style was prevalent nationally from the late 18th century through the 1840's, although Federal buildings remained popular in St. Louis past the middle of the century. The Federal style came from England, and was especially predominant in the American colonies. Houses are characterized by relatively simple, symmetrical facades, with a minimal amount of exterior ornament. Cornices were emphasized with decorative moldings, usually including tooth-like dentils, or brick corbelling. Double hung windows of multiple panes carried flat stone lintels, sometimes in a triangular pediment shape. Windows were smaller in relation to the wall surface than in later styles.
The Lewis Bissell House, in the Hyde Park neighborhood, was constructed in 1830, and is illustrative of the Federal style. The brick house has a five-bay front facade, with a hipped roof and two-story rear verandah, its roof supported by two-story square posts with simple capitals. Above the windows on the front facade are jack arches; centered on the second story is a door with sidelights, which once led to a second story porch. The house was built for Captain Lewis Bissell, the son of the first commander of Fort Bellefountaine, who sited it on the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. Nearly a victim of the construction of Interstate 70, the house has been restored as a restaurant and dinner theater.
Greek Revival Style
The Greek Revival style followed the Federal, and dominated American architecture from about 1830 to 1860. It became so widespread that it was called the "National Style." Greek Revival developed from an increasing interest in classical buildings, accentuated by archeological investigations early in the century. The Greek Revival house type borrows the forms of classical Greek temples, with low-pitched gable or hipped roof, heavy cornices on both house and porch, and the use of columns or pilasters. Its primary characteristic, however, is the "temple front;" a large pediment placed as the predominant feature of the front facade. Very few examples of the Greek Revival style remain in St. Louis.
The Chatillon-DeMenil House was originally constructed as a Federal house in 1849, but was enlarged to its current appearance in 1863. The brick house is two and a half stories, with a long front and short side elevations. The symmetrical house has a pronounced example of the temple front: the 2-story Ionic columns and pediment illustrate the tremendous visual power of this style. Pilasters at either end support a vast cornice of the Ionic order. The house is now restored as a museum.
 
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The temple front form can also be found on less elaborate houses, like the one at 7018 Michigan, in Carondelet. Constructed about 1860, the frame house is two and a half stories, and wider than it is long. Although the house has been considerably altered from its original design, the gable roof retains its dramatic pedimented cornice, and remnants at either end of the front facade show the location of pilasters. Some of the characteristic multi-light windows also remain. The sketch below is a conceptual idea of how this house may once have looked. |
Italian Villa Style
The Italian Villa house type is a decidedly rural house that was popular in St. Louis and nationally during the middle 19th century. The Italian Villa style began in England as part of the Picturesque movement, a reaction to the formal classically-inspired Federal and Greek Revival styles. The house was intended to replicate the Italian country house of the Renaissance; characteristic of the style is a tower or cupola, with the main block of the house placed slightly off center. The hipped roof has widely overhanging eaves; windows are taller and narrower than in earlier styles, and their lintels are highly decorated; the cornice is emphasized with brackets, or small window openings.
Tower Grove House, designed for Henry Shaw by St. Louis architect George I. Barnett in 1849, was located on the grounds of Shaw's country estate (now the Missouri Botanical Garden). The house is constructed of brick, with a tall tower placed between the living quarters for Shaw on the west side and a small service wing on the east. The eastern portion was replaced by a larger addition sometime after Shaw's death; at the same time the exterior walls were covered with stucco. Despite the alterations, however, the house is a prime example of the Italianate Villa style, with decorative lintels and heavy cornice, pierced by attic windows.
Gothic Revival Style
The Gothic Revival style became favored during the second quarter of the 19th century. Also rising out of the Picturesque Movement in England, the style was one of those promulgated by Andrew Jackson Downing, who wrote a series of immensely influential books about the proper design of a picturesque rural cottage. Usually constructed in frame, but occasionally in masonry, the style is characterized by high-pitched side gable roofs, sometimes L-shaped, or with a central gable; exposed eaves and one-story porches. Windows have pointed arches and decorative moldings. The Gothic Revival style was especially prevalent in the east, where numerous Gothic Cottages were constructed; but the style did not have a lasting impact on domestic architecture in the Midwest.
The house at 5801 Minnesota in Carondelet, is a rare remaining example of the Gothic Cottage in St. Louis. The frame residence has an L-shaped plan, with a smaller section at the rear. The house has tall, pointed arched windows with labels; gingerbread trim on the roof gables and entry porches; and a variety of dormers. The house retains its original board-and-batten siding, a particular attribute of the style.