Maryland Terrace Historic District
Maryland Terrace [†] is a neighborhood in University City (with seven houses in neighboring Clayton) composed of three separate subdivisions: Montclair (October 1910), Maryland Terrace (January 1911 ), and Maryland Terrace Amended Subdivision No. 2 (December 1911). They were developed as a unit by real estate promoter Everett Davis, who intended them to be "the SHOW PLACE of St. Louis," or, in the words of journalist William Marion Reedy, "the most perfect residence suburb in the world."
St. Louis, which had a long tradition of planned neighborhoods exemplified by the private places of Julius Pitzman, beginning with the 1866 Benton Place in the Lafayette Square National Register district and including such other National Register districts as West Cabanne Place, Fullerton's Westminster Place, and Portland and Westmoreland Places. The two long straight streets of Maryland Terrace — Westmoreland Drive and Maryland Avenue — may appear conventional on paper, but their unusually broad widths and deep setbacks, particularly on Westmoreland, create a spacious ambiance that is distinct from any of the contemporary upper middle‑class neighborhoods in the St. Louis region. Comparing Maryland Terrace with its contemporaries already listed in the National Register, one may say that while it never achieved the social status of nearby Brentmoor Park and Forest Ridge in Clayton, it arguably surpassed Parkview and University Heights Number One in University City. It attracted a high level and great variety of architecture, including fine examples of most of the popular styles of the era, especially Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival, with some distinguished Craftsman examples and an unusually high number of Italian Renaissance and other stuccoed houses, giving the neighborhood a distinctive appearance. The leading architects of St. Louis are represented by work comparable to that seen in other National Register districts, including such locally respected names as Marcel Boulicault, Angelo Corrubia, Gale Henderson, Maritz & Young, Nolte & Nauman, Study & Farrar, Trueblood & Graf, and an architect later to achieve international fame as a city planner, Henry Wright. The first house was built in 1913, and the development was more than eighty percent complete by the end of the 1920s, with another twenty contributing houses built to 1940. Since then, the neighborhood has maintained a high degree ofphysical integrity, with only twelve additions (out of 206), one loss, and very little significant alteration. In total, there are 289 contributing buildings and 13 non‑contributing buildings in the district. Maryland Terrace embodies the distinctive characteristics of the architecture of its era.
This district is bounded east by Big Bend Boulevard, west by Jackson Avenue, north by Millbrook Boulevard and the southern boundary of University Hills Plat 2, and south by the south or rear line of lots whose front line forms the south side of Maryland Avenue.
† Paul Marsh, University City Historic Preservation Commission, Maryland Terrace Historic District, 1997, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C., accessed June, 2021
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Maryland Avenue • Westmoreland Avenue
