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Beredith Realty's Articles of Association lists 26 investors, several of whom had a particular relation to Parkview.  Thomas Wright was an original director of Parkview Realty and Improvement Company. A. A. B. Woerhelde was President of Lincoln Trust Company when Parkview Realty was incorporated; George W. Lubke was second vice-president and J. H. August Meyer was third vice-president. Woerhelde became president of Beredith Realty and Meyer was assistant secretary. R. F. Kilgen and his partner, Adrian O. Rule, ran McCormick-Kilgen-Rule, which handled sales of Parkview lots out of their small office on the corner of Skinker and Delmar.  Adrian Rule also became one of the three original Parkview Trustees.  Architect William A. Swasey was hired by Beredith Realty to work on about a dozen speculative houses in Parkview but left town before he could fulfill his assignment.  Murray Carleton was president of the dry goods store where Courtland Van Sickler was listed as a clerk.  John C. Roberts also became one of the original Parkview Trustees.  Noted finally is investor Julius Pitzman, renowned surveyor, civil engineer and city planner who shaped and molded Parkview from a barren parcel of farm land into the last and largest private place he would design in the St. Louis area.
 

Julius Pitzman, born in 1837 in Halberstadt, Germany, came to St. Louis in 1854, where he worked for his brother-in-law, Charles E. Salomon, who was the county surveyor.  By 1856, Pitzman was appointed city surveyor.  He started his own business in 1859 - Pitzman's Co., Surveyors and Engineers.  Pitzman made a name for himself in St. Louis and was chief topographical engineer for the Union forces under General Sherman during the Civil War.  He introduced, if not originated, the concept of the private place - selling residential lots under deed restrictions which limited them to single family occupancy and made lot holders also owners of their streets, alleys, etc. He designed his first private street, Benton Place at Lafayette Park, in 1867, drawing on the earlier experiences of Lucas Place downtown, and thereafter laid out most all the private places in St. Louis, which has more of them than any other American city.   He studied park systems in Europe preparatory to laying out Forest Park, one of the largest municipal parks in the country.  Even as he was designing Parkview he was also working on major St. Louis riverfront improvements.  His prestige extended outside St. Louis; he designed a city park in Little Rock, Arkansas, a race course in Nashville, Tennessee and the Industrial suburb Granite City, Illinois.

 

Julius Pitzman survey of a lot in Parkview purchased by Jesse and Sarah Ambler, signed by Pitzman March 27, 1909.  --From the Ambler collection in the Parkview Archives. 
 

Pitzman's Parkview design. Dark green areas are the neighborhood's parks.  --Digital map © C. Kirmaier 2004, reproduced with permission
 

Parkview and Forest Park share the similarities of being sited on rectangular tracts of land with streets laid out in curvilinear patterns. Using the "norm" for street patterns -  north to south, east to west - would have produced more saleable street frontage in Parkview. Instead, Pitzman chose to provide more green spaces and curving streets more soothing and peaceful to the eye. The flow added privacy and diminished the monotony of the uniform building setbacks as the streets curved gently out of sight. The northwest and southwest corners of Parkview, bypassed by the curving streets, were given over to triangular parks that intensified the green environment envisioned as planners planted closely-spaced street trees.  Trees were also planted around the perimeters of the parks to define and enclose them.  A smaller semi-circular area off Skinker originally for sale went unsold and ownership was neglected for decades.  It became part of the neighborhood's common property in the early 1980s when the homeowner across the street spied the property listed as one the City was about to auction off for back taxes.  The neighborhood's Agents (Trustees) quickly paid the taxes due thereby solidifying its place for all time as the third of Parkview's parks.  Pitzman had to contend with Center Street in his design.  This pre-existing straight east-west street bisected Parkview and was a major farm-to-market route. Was a truck route to be permitted to run through the middle of a private, single-family subdivision?  Pitzman alleviated the problem by reducing Center Street to an alley soon causing farmers to bypass the area altogether.

Henry Caulfield, who had filed the plat design in November, 1905, as attorney for Beredith Realty Company, in 1906 filed for a trust indenture.  He was then a U. S. Representative (and later Governor of Missouri) and was soon to become a Parkview homeowner and trustee until his death in 1960. The trust indenture defined the rights and responsibilities of the homeowners and trustees alike.  It named three Trustees -- Henry S. Caulfield, John C. Roberts and Adrian Rule -- and gave them the power to act on behalf on the Parkview residents.  It provided the Trustees with an easement over all the public areas in Parkview including the streets, walks, parks and alleys. The Trustees would handle other needed provisions such as security and street lights and were given the authority to collect assessments provided by the Indenture. The annual assessment was mandatory, which acted as a safeguard against non-contributors and further strengthened the organization's permanence. The indenture assured lot owners the use of the street, sidewalks, etc.  It also repeated the specifications of the subdivision plat, including widths of streets and alleys, sizes of lots, setbacks, minimum construction costs and zoning differentiation. Lots were to range from $2,000 to $5,000 in cost and the minimum cost of construction was to range between $4,000 and $7,000. The building setback was to be a uniform 50 feet.  Construction materials were to be brick, stone or stucco; years proved brick to be the majority choice by far.  With streets, sidewalks, curbs, sewers, water mains and electrical lines all in place, construction began.

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Looking southeast ca. 1906-07 at the intersection of Center St with Westgate and Waterman, and Center's termination on the western edge of Parkview at the street car line.  Westgate Ave continues diagonally to the right to the distant curve around Pershing Park.  Washington Univ. is just beyond.  Parkview may have been a very different place, or never existed, had a scheme to build a bullfighting ring in this very area where Westgate, Waterman and Center meet come to fruition.  The origin of this proposal is not clear, possibly  a "wild idea" for the World's Fair.  Urban legend further has it that the prospect was instrumental in U. City's passing of an ordinance banning bullfighting and bear-baiting shortly after its incorporation.  ---Photo from the  Archives of the University City Public Library, reproduced with permission.  Visit the Library's website to see other historic Univ. City photos.