The Waterman Place-Kingsbury Place-Washington Terrace Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. [‡]
The Waterman Place-Kingsbury Place-Washington Terrace Historic District in St. Louis contains a significant concentration of high style single family dwellings designed by many of St. Louis' most important architects. The three District streets exemplify late 19th early 20th century strategies for protecting residential property from the incursions of urban blight. Waterman Place was laid out in 1896 as a public street with substantial restrictions on the use and physical appearance of improvements. Washington Terrace and Kingsbury Place took this concept a step further by removing the streets themselves, as well as adjacent alleys, from the public domain. As privately owned subdivisions, Washington Terrace and Kingsbury Place have experienced benefits but also proven the limitations of this method of development. The district is very intact: only five of the 131 dwellings are noncontributing, these due to age rather than alteration. The period of significance begins in 1892, the date of the first extant structure, to 1951, when the last of the contributing buildings was constructed.
The District is at the eastern edge of the eighteenth century Spanish land grant given to Joseph Marie Papin and his wife, Marie Louise Chouteau Papin. Through sale and marriage, by the mid-nineteenth century the property was divided into two parcels. The northern half of the district was the estate of Daniel Bell. To the south, the property was owned jointly by Adele Waterman and Mary Virginia DeGiverville, the two daughters of James Wilkinson Kingsbury and Julia Antoinette Cabanne Kingsbury.
In 1883, the Bell and the Kingsbury residences faced Union, set back from the street on wide driveways. The Kingsbury daughters' land was already divided. Waterman, Kingsbuy, DeGiverville (now Pershing) and Alfred (now Belt) were named for members of the family. On the 1883 Hopkins map, the term "Kingsbury Place" is already applied to everything bounded by Kingsbury, Union, the railroad tracks to the south, and DeBaliviere to the west (although there is no plat on file with the City of St. Louis for this subdivision).
After Daniel Bell's death, his son Ernest P. Bell moved out of the house on Union, although it appears that he returned for a period later in the 1880s. In 1889, he and his wife Dorcas moved to a house on West Belle Place more than a dozen city blocks to the east. In 1892, his real estate company platted the private "Bell Place" on the family's old property. Its centerpiece was Washington Terrace.
The Waterman Place-Kingsbury Place-Washington Terrace Historic District illustrates two of the ways developers attempted to retain residential property values and attract buyers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. The first, exemplified by Waterman Place, was to restrict property use and building along a public street through the use of deed restrictions. The second, at work in Kingsbury Place and Washington Terrace, was to completely privatize all aspects of the subdivision and hand responsibility for enforcement to a group of elected trustees. Both methods worked successfully in the District, but, they failed outside of the immediate boundaries of the District.
Beginning with Lucas Place in 1851, wealthy St. Louisans developed a unique method to prevent nuisances in their neighborhoods. Through a combination of property restrictions and private ownership of streets and utilities, the concept of the "private place" evolved throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. These private places were the forerunners of today's "gated subdivisions," which share many of the same characteristics. Most of the historic private places still extant within the City of St. Louis are listed in the National Register.
When the Bell Real Estate Company dedicated Bell Place in 1892, it followed a formula already proven in earlier successes such as Vandeventer Place (1870) and its more recent competition, the Forest Park Addition (1888). The original deed establishing Bell Place was signed on October 29,1892 by the Bell Place Realty Company and its new trustees, Charles A. Young, George H. Augustine, and Allister K. Stewart. To them was granted responsibility for the street itself, for Clara Avenue at the western border (with directions on its disposition when the land to the west was divided), and a walk to be opened from Delmar on the north to Kingsbury on the south. Trustees and their successors were charged with the maintenance of the joint property and vacant property, and enforcement of a long list of restrictions. The granitoid curbs and sidewalks still in place today were dictated in this document.
According to a map tucked into the original deed, Bell Place originally included 71 lots fronting Delmar Boulevard (immediately north of the district) and Washington Terrace. By 1894, additional lots on the north side of Kingsbury Place had been added. A promotional brochure of that year drew on all the hyperbolic powers of its author to promote the new development:
"Its improvement is superior to that of any other place of the city. The growth of St. Louis will increase the value of Bell Place as a high caste residential property. This last assertion should be carefully considered. Permanent protection from the intrusion of business or nuisance of all kinds is the only thing that enhances the value of residence property. The full breadth and scope of Forest Park effectually protects Bell Place from the smoke and noxious gases generated and thrown out by factories. No matter how numerous such factories may become, this protection afforded by the Park can be relied upon as permanent. Houses in Bell Place may be decorated and furnished in a manner which is impracticable in other parts of the city, because of the destructive smoke and dirt which destroys fine draperies in other sections."
Furthermore, the setting was "free from miasmic vapors."
No houses were permitted in the first two years of sales (1893 was not a good year for buying a new house in general), but in 1895 two houses were begun and fifteen individual property owners (all on Washington Terrace) were taxed. Two more houses were begun in 1896, and a total of eighteen owners were taxed.
At this time, two new developments were in the works on the streets just south. Both of them were named Kingsbury Place.
In 1896, a group called the Kingsbury Place Land Company platted the "Kingsbury Place" subdivision, which included modern day Waterman Place and the block immediately south (now Pershing, but then still known as DeGiverville). Unlike Bell Place, the streets were dedicated for public use. The only individual property owner listed on the plat is J. A. Seddon, who purchased his property from the company in 1895. His house at 41 Waterman Place was the first to be permitted on the block. The remainder of the property was dedicated by the Kingsbury Place Land Company, a private company headed by Samuel M. Kennard, a leading citizen who, as a founding trustee of Portland Place, had proven experience in developing high-end residential streets.
Original deeds from the Kingsbury Place Land Company stipulate a 40 foot setback, like that on Bell Place, and a $7,000 minimum building cost. While not as exclusive as Washington Terrace, this minimum still restricted the street to wealthy citizens. It is the same minimum required on Westmoreland Place and $1000 more than Portland Place (both from1 888). For comparison, nine years later the minimum cost on Utah Place, one of the most exclusive streets in middle-class Tower Grove Heights, was $4000.
The second development known as "Kingsbury Place" referred to the street name rather than the name of a subdivision. In 1902, the Bell Place Realty Company filed a plat dividing the southernmost section of Bell Place, that on the north side of Kingsbury Place into lots. The president of the Bell Place Realty Company, Lewis Bierman filed a plat on the same day dedicating the southern side of that block as "Bierman Terrace."
Using the Bell Place deed as a model, the Bell Place Realty Company and Lewis Bierman wrote a deed to the trustees of Kingsbury Place in 1902. Section Seven, governing property restrictions, was copied verbatim with a few exceptions. Individual stables would not be allowed if, within six months, the trustees decided to build a common stable.
The Kingsbury Place trustees were also charged with extending the private street when possible. Kingsbury Place was still only half the length of Washington Terrace, and the Bell Place Realty Company owned the north side of the next block.
It appears that some of the delay in privatizing the next block of Kingsbury Place may have been due to the World's Fair. Although it is not confirmed that all of these structures were actually built, there is a clear permit record for a virtual city of temporary dwellings in the two blocks east of DeBaliviere (the Fair's main entrance) on both Waterman and Kingsbury, including the western block of what is now Kingsbury Place.
In February 1904, 50 temporary frame dwellings were permitted on the north side of the second block of Kingsbury Place (5543-81 Kingsbury). If the addresses are correct and they were indeed constructed, this would explain the delay in extending Kingsbury Place to the west. In March, 50 temporary "portable" frame dwellings were permitted on the 5500 block of Waterman, backing up to the western block of Kingsbury Place, at a cost of $400 each. The following month, a temporary 2-story office building and a temporary frame restaurant and lodging house were also permitted.
By 1906, the temporary structures were presumably gone and the second half of Kingsbury Place was dedicated as a private street. In an agreement between the Bell Place Realty Company, five different owners on the south side of the block, and the Trustees of Kingsbury Place, the street was divided into narrow lots - much narrower than the eastern end of the street - and restrictions and responsibilities were laid out. Just as the Bell Place deed was the model for Kingsbury Place, Kingsbury Place was the model for the new "Kingsbury Terrace." In fact, Charles M. Rice, a trustee of both, possessed a copy of the Kingsbury Place deed marked up with changes for Kingsbury Terrace.
It appears that trustees of Kingsbury Place were the de facto trustees of Kingsbury Terrace until 1912-1913, when the original Kingsbury Place trustees resigned and were replaced by Terrace property owners. It appears that they were governed and financed separately by 1910 (if not originally), when the west gate of Kingsbury Place was permitted. One trustee warned in 1914 that "if the two places ever combine the residents of the west end would have to pay to the trustees of the east end an amount equivalent to the difference in the cost of the two entrance gates, and for that reason of course the two places should remain separate."
The theory and practice of property restrictions, whether governed by a group of trustees or restricted by deeds, turned out to be two different things. In the Kingsbury Place subdivision, lots on Waterman were developed according to the deed restrictions. On Pershing, just one block to the south and governed by the same restrictions, the story was completely different. The development of a streetcar line apparently discouraged single family homes. Restricted or not, almost all of the buildings constructed on this block were apartment buildings.
On Delmar (another streetcar line), the trustees of Bell Place faced a similar situation. In 1917, the trustees met to discuss an apartment building proposed for lot five, fronting Delmar.
It also appears that the trustees no longer charged assessments on the Delmar lots at this point in time. They apparently recognized that despite the protections built into their deed of restrictions, governance still depended heavily on mutual consent. This, however, did not mean that the trustees relinquished all control over Delmar. They did not hesitate to wield their most powerful weapon against Delmar developers.
The trustees commonly used this power to extract concessions regarding the type of fuel to be burned, specifically forbidding the use of soft coal on lots backing up to Washington Terrace. The trustees would later work with Raymond Tucker, Smoke Commissioner, to report and correct violators. Even so, their measures were not always effective, and the apartment buildings on Delmar were only a small part of a growing multi-family district. As early as 1914, smoke drove Charles and May Rice away from their new house on Kingsbury Terrace.
In Kingsbury Place: The First Two Hundred Years, Julius Hunter chronicles the short tenures of many of the original Kingsbury Place residents, counting almost twenty families that left within ten years of building a house. It can safely be assumed that the Rices were not the only family bothered by coal smoke after the apartments started rising. On Washington Terrace, however, the trustees never loosened their grip. Even though there were still many unimproved lots by the mid-1920s, more than 30 years after Bell Place was organized, trustees still rejected offers to split the lots. In both Kingsbury Place and Washington Terrace, the high level of design was maintained even beyond the historic period, as new houses by local architects went up into the 1970s.
The use of restrictions proved an effective force in shaping a single family enclave between the apartment districts that grew along the Delmar and Pershing streetcar lines. On all three streets, the development rules laid down just before and after the turn of the century were effective in controlling growth, maintaining original character, and resisting encroachment when the character of the neighborhood changed in the 1950s and 60s. In 1974 the residents of the 5300 block of Waterman, noting that the block was unique among the public streets in the area, lobbied the city to privatize the street. Under the guidance of trustees similar to those in Washington Terrace, Kingsbury Place, and Kingsbury Terrace, Waterman Place joined the ranks of the private places of St. Louis.
As a group, Washington Terrace, Kingsbury Place, and Waterman Place illustrate high-end residential design in St. Louis from the very end of the 19th century through the mid-20th century. With few exceptions, the great architects of St. Louis are represented. There are late works by great 19th century architects (such as Jerome Legg's 1906 house at 29 Washington Terrace) and early works by great 20th century architects (LaBeaume and Bradshaw among others). Although the scale varies greatly due to lot sizes and budgets, the majority of the contributing buildings are good examples of the architect's art. Important styles and trends of the early and mid-20th century are beautifully illustrated, and several buildings stand out as important individual works.
The first resource constructed in the district is also one of the most individually significant: Harvey Ellis' gates for Washington Terrace (1892). Working for St. Joseph architect George Mann, who had relocated to St. Louis to supervise progress on City Hall (also attributed to Ellis), Ellis created a gate worthy of a medieval city. The central tower is often compared to the monumental gate of Lubeck, Germany.
Ellis remains a shadowy (and therefore tantalizing) figure in American architecture despite recent efforts to shed light on his life and career. A draftsman of great genius, he evidently preferred to design for other men. In addition to the Washington Terrace gates and City Hall, Ellis is also credited with designing the Compton Hill Water Tower. All three of these St. Louis works show an intense interest in the picturesque. Ellis was influenced by H. H. Richardson. The use of contrasting materials and textures, though, was in opposition to Richardson's late work, as well as the simplicity of the ascendant Renaissance Revival. Ellis' designs were a luxurious alternative to the new styles coming into vogue during his career.
The earliest residences in the district were constructed beginning in 1895. Two, by William Albert Swasey, were on Waterman; the other two, by Barnett, Haynes & Barnett, were on Washington Terrace. These residences illustrated the connection between the new streets opening up west of Union and the exclusive areas already under construction in the Central West End. Swasey's 1895 Seddon House at #41 Waterman Place (1895) is very similar to his earlier house at 4342 Westminster, a near mirror image with an added two-story portico. In his 1900 Examples of Architectural Work by William Albert Swasey, FAIA, Swasey includes Judge Wood's residence at #27 Waterman (1895) along with designs from Fullerton's Westminster Place and grander examples from the Forest Park Addition. The building permit record lists this house's estimated cost as $12,000, comparable to many (although by no means all) of the later houses on Kingsbury Place.
The early work of Barnett, Haynes & Barnett on Washington Terrace (and later on Kingsbury Place) is mostly Beaux Arts in style, and includes some of the best examples of the style in St. Louis. Without doubt the most impressive of these was the Corwin Spencer House at #5 Washington Terrace, demolished in 1942. Its shallow round bows, two-story loggia dressed up as a Palladian opening, and extensive use of carved limestone trim all made it a showplace. The price tag of $80,000 reported on the 1899 building permit is so high that one wonders if it is an error. The mansions permitted on Washington Terrace in the following decade rarely were estimated at more than $30,000.
The Eugene Williams House at #9 Washington Terrace (1895) may be seen as a prototype for the Spencer House; it lacks the bows and loggia (a Palladian window replaces the loggia opening) but the fenestration and surface textures follow a similar pattern. Here, the third story or attic story features small oval windows circled by lily of the valley; putti heads float across the top with swags and foliated drops descending from them. In the late 1890s, the three-story symmetrical limestone-fronted Beaux Arts mansion became a staple of private street architecture, repeated in imaginative variations throughout the Forest Park Addition and beyond. Eames & Young and W. Albert Swasey offered examples as early as 1892 and 1894 in the Forest Park Addition, and the 1895 Williams House may be seen as another early example in this trend.
Barnett, Haynes & Barnett's E. P. Bell House of the same year also belongs to the category of eclectic classical revivals, although in this case the building is more severe. The two-story Ionic portico fronting a three-story house is a favored form of Palladio, although the round-arched entry is a Beaux Arts touch. The yellow Roman brick is a striking and uncommon material, also used to great effect by Eames and Young at 23 Portland Place.
Two more houses were permitted on Washington Terrace in the following year. The first, the James LaPrelle House at #10, illustrates the waning Richardsonian Romanesque style at its most opulent. This would be one of the last major examples of the style in St. Louis. The LaPrelle House became one of the most widely known through publication, including six photographic plates in the July 1904 supplement to The Western Architect (eight years after it was built). While the front of the house is fairly orthodox Richardson, the west elevation includes a surprisingly classical bow bay with a pediment reaching into the third story. Thus the transition from Victorian Richardsonian to classicism is made.
Number 38 was permitted in 1896 to the Snoqualmie Realty Company, which is not listed in St. Louis business directories. No architect was reported on the permit, although it has been attributed to Barnett, Haynes & Barnett. It is a three-story limestone Beaux Arts composition with shallow bow bays.
The last extant nineteenth century building in the district is also on Washington Terrace. Eames & Young designed the house at #21 in 1898, and Charles Savage deserves credit for uncovering the prototype.
The original is identified as Pierre-Victor Cuvillier's Hotel de Bailleul of 1882, demolished c. 1960, at 126 Avenue de Wagram. With the demolition of #7 Kingsbury Place, designed by Bamett, Haynes & Barnett a few years later, this house is the district's sole example of the highly decorated French Renaissance revival aspect of Beaux Arts. Eames & Young were not afraid to step outside of the mainstream of design in St. Louis. Sometimes it was because they were ahead of the stream; sometimes their compositions, like the McMillan House, remained unique in St. Louis. In 1906, as we will see, the firm created another design on Waterman Place which also is without local precedent or comparison.
After Kingsbury Place opened in 1902, construction was possible on all three streets in the district. Barnett, Haynes & Barnett set the tone for Kingsbury Place with lavish Beaux Arts gates designed to advertise the style and prosperity of the residents that would live within. The firm dominated construction in the first decade of the 20' century, with four houses on Kingsbury Place and five on Washington Terrace. They continued to appropriate historical motifs, creating a scaled down Petit Trianon at #11 Kingsbury. The Beaux Arts classicism of the Barnetts and other firms, however, toned down considerably in the years following the World's Fair - almost as if everyone had enough. The period of 1905-1920 brought an avalanche of Tudor Revival houses, accompanied by Colonial Revival mansions and a whole series of Italian villas. Variations on these themes revealed the cross-pollination between styles in the early 20th century, blurring formal distinctions and, in a few cases, drawing on the inventions of contemporary European and American architects.
The most well-represented style in the historic district is the Colonial Revival, at almost 30 percent of the primary resources. One of the reasons for this abundance is the longevity of the style, which evolved throughout the 20th century. The first example in the district may be George Hellmuth's 1900 house at #71 Waterman Place. It is in some ways typical of the eclecticism of the age, combining decorated stone lintels, a wreath in the central pediment, and a stone fan light with the gambrel roof that was often associated with more sober compositions. It also exemplifies Hellmuth's idiosyncratic approach to fenestration, which sometimes disregards existing conventions of symmetry and placement, hinting at extraordinary interior compositions (most notable, in this district, at the highly unusual 94 Waterman Place.
Another early Colonial composition, A. B. Groves' house at #11 Washington Terrace (1905), further illustrates overlapping styles. It is more orthodox than Hellmuth's earlier example, but strays from its Georgian roots by surrounding the first floor windows with blind brick arches. As the century moved ahead, examples tend to become both more sober and more Colonial. According to McAlester, more published material became available, and the examples "built between the years 1915 and 1935 reflect these influences by more closely resembling early prototypes than did those built earlier or later. An early example of this trend is J. F. Gayler's #85 Waterman Place (1907); one of the later examples is Nolte & Nauman's #2 Kingsbury Place, 1925.
About 20% of the residences in the district are in the Tudor Revival style. Arriving later than the Colonial Revival and departing sooner, this style found a welcome home in the high-income blocks off Union. Freed from the rigid symmetry of Beaux Arts and related styles, the Tudor Revival allowed a more flexible plan. Other styles that accommodated the same kind of flexibility tended to be less acceptable on exclusive urban streets. The Shingle Style, for example, had been reserved for more rural settings (in the city of St. Louis, the major concentration is on West Cabanne Place at the city limits), while the incoming bungalow style was rather informal for such high-ticket houses.
Tudor Revival became acceptable among society architects in the 1890s but did not flourish as a popular style until the 20th century. Esley Hamilton states that the style "made its first tentative appearance in St. Louis in 1891 in the house designed for brick manufacturer E. C. Sterling at 22 Westmoreland by Rossiter & Wright of New York with local assistance from Eames & Young. Of the 26 or so examples of the style within the district, 23 were constructed between the years of 1906 and 1913. The majority of these have front-facing half-timbered gable ends, with Tudor arches and limestone trim. Almost all are asymmetrical three-bay compositions. This is a significant concentration of examples of the style within the city of St. Louis, where generally narrow lot sizes meant that citywide, most buildings are not more than two bays wide.
It is notable that some of the grander examples of the style reject the half-timbered picturesque compositions that are characteristic of Tudor Revival. The Martin Shaughnessy House at #1 Washington Terrace (Barnett, Haynes & Barnett, 1908) is properly Tudor in its use of limestone-coped stepped gables, quoined openings, and label moldings. But with the exception of the eastern sunroom wing, the house is entirely symmetrical. At the first two stories, none of the trim projects beyond the brick surface, another unusual take on the style. The Teasdale House at #38 Kingsbury (constructed by Wall Brothers and sometimes attributed to architectural critic S. L. Sherer, 1908) is another example without timber and stucco at the facade, where the Tudor style is expressed in the shape of gables and openings and the type of stone trim. Half-timbering is saved for the side elevations' gable ends.
About fifteen percent of the houses in the district can be classified as Italian Renaissance, a very broad stylistic category which can cover anything from a proper Italian palazzo with classical detailing (such as Barnett, Haynes & Barnett's #31 Kingsbury Place, 1908) to more free interpretations, Italian mainly in their use of round-arched windows and bracketed eaves (such as Will Levy's #54 Kingsbury Place, 1916). Several of the houses deserve special mention: Mauran, Russell & Garden's Edwards House at #10 Kingsbury Place (1905) has a third-story recessed loggia, an unusual feature for that period. In 1911, Nolte used a somewhat similar feature at #16. In this example, the entrance is in a two-story canted projecting bay, over which is a third story recessed balcony topped by a sort of pergola structure. Hellmuth & Hellmuth's #20 Kingsbury Place of the same year mixes classical features with complex brickwork to create a small gem of a house.
A separate consideration from architectural style (although related) is the use of materials. Inventive brickwork is used throughout the district in buildings representing almost every style. In Tudor Revival style buildings, brickwork is often laid in herringbone patterns to suggest nogging in the half-timbered sections (as at #32 Kingsbury Place). Herringbone patterns also add interest to the surface of #20 Kingsbury Place (an Italianate composition, mentioned above) and to Kingsbury Place's west gatehouse (more related to the Arts & Crafts movement). Sometimes brickwork is the main source of decoration, as at #29 Kingsbury Place, where glazed courses follow a chevron pattern. At #33 Waterman Place (1913), Hellmuth & Hellmuth designed corbelled brick planters under the second story windows. Brick is also commonly used to suggest quoins.
While decorative panels and insets abound throughout the district, in many cases patterned and textured brick is used as an overall surface material. At and after the turn of the century, an overwhelming variety of colors, textures and finishes revolutionized the way brick was used. In a 1903 article, critic and architect S. L. Sherer wrote that "monotonous uniformity applied to modem stock brick imparts a lifelessness to the wall that no merit in design can wholly overcome." Sherer's survey of "Interesting Brick and Terra-cotta Architecture in St. Louis" was full of examples of modern architects maximizing the impact of brick through the use of color selection, bond pattern and mortar joints. He includes descriptions of E. A. Manny's Scarritt House at #28 Washington Terrace (1901) and Swasey's Northrop House across the street at #23 (1901).
In the years following Sherer's article, brick laid in patterns became more common as the surface material for compositions both simple and complex. Flemish bond was used to great effect, most notably at Barnett's #27 Washington Terrace, and the imposing #81 Waterman Place. At #16 Washington Terrace, an almost gray textured brick is laid in Flemish bond with different colored headers. Some Tudor Revival houses, especially those from the Mariner & LaBeaume partnership, intersperse rows of dark headers among the standard red running bond. While some of the most imposing early residences in the district are stone, it is the diversity of brickwork in the hands of skilled architects and craftsmen which gives the district much of its character.
While the significance of the district rests on its concentration of high-quality representative examples of contemporary styles and the work of local architects, there are a few houses that deserve mention for their individuality.
The first is the Chauncey Ladd House at #41 Washington Terrace. Designed by the firm of Isaac Taylor in 1905, it is attributed to Oscar Enders, who designed much of Taylor's residential and commercial work during the World's Fair period. Charles Savage believes it is unique in St. Louis; its three-story facade suggests the affinities between the Sezession and the Chicago Prairie strong horizontal lines are broken by vertical window bays defined by pilasters which terminate in capitals reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple. The house's sharp geometric lines and ornament stand out in this revival-inspired neighborhood.
The following year, Eames & Young designed a house at #51 Waterman Place which picks up cues from contemporary Craftsman and Prairie examples in its stuccoed top story. The use of multi-story window framing devices had been used successfully by Eames & Young in Cupples Station (and is found in some of the three-story Renaissance inspired houses in the district) but the unusually long lintels and sills add a horizontality that does not reflect a known St. Louis precedent. The cavetto cornice is atypical for a residential design, and the severe granite Doric columns framing the recessed porch are also unique in the district and perhaps the city.
Barnett, Haynes & Barnett's house for Dr. O'Reilly at #27 Washington Terrace (1907) is another interesting combination of elements. Savage believes it "reflects Tom Barnett's new interest in contemporary German and Austrian architecture.
Another house which should not be overlooked in a discussion of unique architectural features in the Green House at #12 Kingsbury Place, designed by Lawrence Ewald in 1912. The original owner, John Leigh Green, was president of Laclede-Christy Clay Products Company Its significance lies in its fireproof clay tile and concrete construction. According to Julius Hunter, the first of its kind in St. Louis: "before the city would issue an occupancy permit for Number 12, the building contractor had to fill up the thirty-eight by seventeen foot living room with sand up to window level and wet it down to prove that the structure with its total concrete and steel construction could withstand the weight of the second floor without cracking."
Residents of the district did their best to protect and insulate themselves during the period of migration and disinvestment that began, perhaps, as early as the Great Depression. Washington Terrace trustees gradually relinquished control over development on Delmar. By the 1950s remaining houses on Delmar were being converted to boarding houses, and high-rise apartments started to go up. In 1960 the trustees adopted a new Deed of Restrictions, finally and formally dropping any responsibility for development along Delmar. Although many residents moved during this period, the permit record shows that others were digging in on all three streets by constructing swimming pools and erecting tall fences. As previously mentioned, Waterman residents sought the protections and advantages of living on a private street and formalized this arrangement in 1975. Residents who moved to Kingsbury Place in the 1970s usually report that houses were easily obtained for less than $30,000, less than a tenth of their present value.
‡ Lynn Josse, Waterman Place-Kingsbury Place-Washington Terrace Historic District, St. Louis, MO,, nomination document, 2007, National Park Service, National Registr of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Street Names
Belt Avenue • Kingsbury Place • Washington Terrace • Waterman Place