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Houses of Missouri 
1870-1940
By Cydney Millstein and Carol Grove
Foreword by Richard Longstreth
Suburban Domestic Architecture series
9 x 12 inches, 278 pages
Nearly 300 duotone photographs, drawings, and floor plans
Cloth, dust jacket
ISBN: 978-0-926494-54-1
October 2008
Described as “neither east nor west nor north nor south,” Missouri served, for much of the 19th century, as America’s gateway to somewhere else, the half-point to the western frontier.
It has been home to the nation’s richest farmers, ambitious immigrant entrepreneurs, and American visionaries Mark Twain and Thomas Hart Benton. Their houses were quirky mid-American interpretations of East Coast and European idioms distilled by homegrown architects. At Westmoreland Place, Portland Place, and Parkview in St. Louis and the model Country Club District in Kansas City, progressive civil engineers, planners, and landscape designers transformed wheat fields and flower-strewn prairies into sophisticated planned communities that remain to this day the “best places in town” to live.
With nearly 300 archival photographs, drawings, and original floor plans, Houses of Missouri, 1870–1940, offers an intimate tour behind the facades of 45 purely American houses. Among these are Greystone, the pastoral Gothic cottage of Major Emory Foster in Pevely; Oak Hall, the opulent mansion of the legendary Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson; the iconoclastic “machine in the prairie,” Samuel Marx-designed Ladue residence for department store magnate Morton May; and Chatol, the striking Art Moderne “farmhouse” in rural Boone county. The authors bring to life the fortunes, motivations, and aspirations of their wealthy and upstanding house owners who rigorously defined what was “suitable” and respectable living in America’s heartland.
FROM THE AUTHORS:
Mary Rockwell Hook was one of Kansas City’s earliest practicing female architects and an early proponent of using recycled materials in her designs. Four Gates Farm, her very last Kansas City residential project (in which she teamed with Mac Remington), was built for Marvin and Medill Smith Gates. It is a rambling, eclectic masonry house sited on a hill and reached (the main façade) by a series of switchbacks from a two-lane, tree-lined road. While the exterior of Four Gates Farm is somewhat monolithic, it is the interior that rings exceptional. The irregular room arrangement, the incorporation of a variety of local materials, and the ability to “bring the outside into the interior,” is most apparent here.
While Rockwell Hook’s work in Kansas City is highly regarded by laypeople and professionals alike, Four Gates Farm is not one of her better-known designs, more than likely due to its very secluded location far from the city’s main residential areas. It is also difficult to access unless you know the owner and call ahead of your arrival. The discovery of this house, late in the process of writing Houses of Missouri, even came as a surprise to me. As with several of the houses, I found directions to Four Gates, wound my way through eastern Jackson County (with some difficulty), and met one of the workers at the gate of the long, winding drive to the garden side of the house. While I waited roadside, a young man phoned the owner, who happened to be at the house directing the current restoration. As it turned out, the owner was a former client of mine; he recognized my name and invited me to take a tour of the grounds and home. A resident of Independence, he had purchased Four Gates Farm as a family getaway from his busy law practice. His restoration efforts give me the strong impression that Four Gates will be enjoyed for many years to come.
—Cydney Millstein
Houses of Missouri, 1870-1940 is this year's recipient of the Osmond Overby Award from the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation. Congratulations, Cydney and Carol!
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Weight: |
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Price: $65.00 |
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