This page has been optimized for printing through your browser.

Kirkwood Neighborhood

DESCRIPTION: With large, beautiful stately old homes with broad, open lawns framed by mature trees and sidewalks lining its streets, Kirkwood is the picture of small town America. But while its lifestyle follows much of the stereotype of comfortable, small-town life where neighbors know each other, children walk to the business district to buy ice cream and trinkets and life is quiet and laid back, Kirkwood's origins veer from the stereotype. Despite its appearance of a quiet, small Midwestern town, Kirkwood is actually a suburb just 14 miles from downtown St. Louis. In fact, Kirkwood is often called "Queen of the Suburbs" because it was the first "planned suburb" west of the Mississippi.

The quaint train depot in the city's business district was built in 1893 and is a fitting symbol of the city. Kirkwood began as a railroad town, the result of the building of the Missouri Pacific Railway. The city's history is intertwined with the rails as early residents became the area's first suburbanites traveling by the train daily from Kirkwood to their offices downtown. Today Kirkwood Station is the only suburban AMTRAK stop in the St. Louis area and visitors can board the train there for a short hop downtown or to nearby Washington, Missouri for a day trip as well as for longer AMTRAK trips.

Kirkwood offers the visitor a variety of experiences-from the excitement of live theatre at Stages, a professional theatrical company, to the titillation of the taste buds at a vibrant farmers' market to the unending fun at the Magic House Children's Museum to the quiet solitude of nature on hiking trails in the Powder Valley Conservation Area.

LOCATION: West St. Louis County

PHONE NUMBER: Claire Budd, Public Information Officer, City of Kirkwood, 314-822-5894 or Ed Ruesing, executive director of Kirkwood Junction Special Business District, 314-822-0084.

WEB SITE: www.ci.kirkwood.mo.us or www.kirkwoodjunction.com

GETTING THERE: To get to the heart of Kirkwood from downtown, take I-64/40 West to Lindbergh Boulevard South exit. Take Lindbergh (it becomes Kirkwood Road) about 3 miles to the central business district.

Or take I-44 West to the Lindbergh Exit. Take Lindbergh north (it becomes Kirkwood Road) about 1.5 miles to Kirkwood Junction.

BEST KNOWN FOR: Kirkwood is known for its large older homes with sweeping lawns and mature trees and as the home of the Magic House Children's Museum; Stages, a professional theatrical company, and Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Kirkwood Junction, bounded by Woodbine, Bodley, Taylor and East Clay, is the city's central business district. The centerpiece of the Junction is Kirkwood Station, a historic train depot built in 1893 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The depot is still used as an AMTRAK stop and has become a symbol of Kirkwood.
• The Kirkwood Farmers' Market near Kirkwood Junction, brings fresh fruit and vegetables, plants and flowers, bread, meats and ready-to-eat foods to residents and visitors Thursday through Saturday from April through September. The Market is located where the trains' "round table" once stood.
• Kirkwood has more than 300 acres of parkland including the centrally-located Kirkwood park, home to an aquatic center, ice rink, outdoor amphitheater, ball fields, tennis courts, picnic sites and playground areas. Ken Connor Park is the city's newest park. Located in the heart of Kirkwood Junction at Argonne and Kirkwood Road, the vest pocket park was donated by Connor, former resident and Kirkwood business person of the year in 1992.
• Kirkwood is home to Stages St. Louis, a professional, not-for-profit theatre company dedicated to producing the indigenous American art form of musical theatre. Stages had its inaugural season in 1987. It produces three musicals in 120 performances seasonally in a season that runs May through October. Performances are held in the 380-seat Robert G. Reim Theatre in the Kirkwood Civic Center.
• The Magic House St. Louis Children's Museum is also located in Kirkwood. The Museum has been voted the highest rated children's museum and one of the top 12 family attractions in the U. S. by FamilyFun Magazine.
• Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center is a 112-acre oasis on the edge of Kirkwood. Visitors can hike three hiking trails, visit a nature center with a variety of exhibits on the botany and wildlife of Missouri or use the center's library with books on nature and the geology of the area.
• Kirkwood is also the site of the St. Louis Community College at Meramec, built in 1971 following a $47 million bond issue passed by voters in St. Louis and St. Louis County. The Meramec campus, built on the site of the former St. Joseph College, has the highest enrollment of the system's three campuses.
• Kirkwood is filled with large, beautiful homes, some Civil War-era, others built around the turn of the century.
• Mudd's Grove is a Greek Revival home built in 1859-60 that is open for tours several times a month. The home, which was built for John Hoffman, a local builder and real estate developer, is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1994, a group of 23 middle school students conducted an archaeological dig at Mudd's Grove. Their findings and interviews with Mudd family relatives and others who lived in the house were published in a booklet.
• Kirkwood is the site of one of two Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes in the St. Louis area.
• Many vintage buildings have been adopted to new uses-an early filling station which once filled the tanks of Model Ts is now a custard stand, the O.K. Hatchery, Feed and Garden Store, built as part of a lumber yard in 1904, now sells garden supplies and birdfeed.
• Kirkwood is home to Olive Chapel of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the earliest African American congregations west of the Mississippi. For many of its early years, a circuit-riding preacher served the congregation.
• Quinette Cemetery on Old Big Bend Road, a small black cemetery, is the final resting place of slaves and freed blacks from Kirkwood's earliest days. Some Civil War soldiers are also reportedly buried in the cemetery that was owned by Olive Chapel until the mid-1980's.
• The Kirkwood School District has one of the highest graduation rates in the country.
• Kirkwood was helped in its efforts to preserve the city's distinct historic character by its selection as one of 10 cities in the Missouri Main Street program. The program offers incentives for new and existing businesses to operate in downtown and encourages beautification of the area.

HISTORY: Built on land that was part of the Louisiana Purchase, Kirkwood owes its existence to the twin tragedies of epidemic and fire that struck St. Louis in 1849 and to the development of the Pacific railroad route-it was a stop on the early Pacific Railroad.

After a major fire and a cholera epidemic destroyed part of downtown St. Louis, the climate was ripe for development of an area outside of the city that offered relief from the congestion and dangers of city life. Two real estate developers, Hiram Leffingwell and Richard Elliot, promoted the idea of a suburb, a community environment removed from the city.

In 1850, the two, as part of a group of 40 investors, bought several hundred acres along the proposed railroad route for the line that would link the eastern part of the country with the Pacific coast. The selection of a Missouri River route for the trans-continental railroad put St. Louis at the terminus of the railroad.

The city was formally established in 1853 and was named for James Pugh Kirkwood, the engineer who platted the city and surveyed the Pacific railroad route which passed through the area.

The streets of the original town were platted into a rectangular grid with blocks divided into quarter sections of more than one acre each. Families could purchase an entire block creating a five-acre estate.

Deed restrictions limited commercial endeavors in Kirkwood keeping the city free of things such as slaughter houses, soap factories or dram shops which were prohibited.

Kirkwood's streets leading from the train depot are named for presidents--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Taylor, Harrison, Van Buren and Fillmore. But Kirkwood veered from the plan when it came to Andrew Jackson opting instead for Geyer Road. Main Street was renamed Argonne in 1919 to honor U. S. servicemen in World War I. The main north-south thoroughfare had several names before it became Kirkwood Road. It is known as Lindbergh Boulevard outside of Kirkwood.

When trains first rolled into Kirkwood in 1853, they stopped at a building at the site of the present station. A stagecoach would then take passengers from the train station to Manchester, Missouri. A larger station replaced the original station 10 years later, and the current station, an outstanding example of Richardsonian architecture, was built in 1893.

From the beginning, the train was an integral part of life in Kirkwood. Early promoters hawked the city as a healthy place to live. With the cholera epidemic that killed a fifth of St. Louis' population a recent memory, they pitched the new community's fresh air and open spaces. Many early Kirkwood residents were wealthy businessmen eager to safeguard their families from the dangers of life in the city by moving them from the crowded urban area to the new suburb. Some kept town homes in the city where they stayed during the workweek returning to their homes in suburbia on the weekends. Others commuted daily to the city via train and, in fact, commuter trains brought workers to their jobs downtown until they were discontinued in the 1960s.

Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Kirkwood had slaves and "free colored persons" living within its boundaries. When the Civil War broke out, Kirkwood, like many towns in the country, saw families and friends torn apart by loyalties to both sides. Several Kirkwoodians either moved their families south or left them in Missouri and went off to join the Confederate Army while others joined the Union Army.

Home Guards made a raid on Southern sympathizers in St. Louis County in 1861 reportedly taking any slaves they found back to the city causing much indignation among the slave-holders in the county. Two years later some 70 "Radical Union Men of Missouri," Northern sympathizers including one from Kirkwood, traveled to Washington to inform President Abraham Lincoln that they were unhappy with federal policies in Missouri.

The Civil War came closest to Kirkwood in 1864 when Confederate troops moving up from Arkansas came within 10 miles of St. Louis on the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railroad. This made Union commanders nervous since local sympathizers could reach the Confederate Army relatively easily. That led the Union commander in St. Louis to issue an order that "traitors and four spies caught in the act of passing the Federal lines to the rebel forces now invading the state will be shot on the spot."

Later that year the Confederates raided a post office at Cheltenham near Manchester Avenue on the Pacific Railroad. The raid was between Kirkwood and St. Louis and brought a detachment of the Missouri Militia that camped at Laclede Station on the Pacific Railroad holding back a Confederate invasion of the town.

Kirkwood has always been a hub for transportation. In addition to its link with the railroads, it was a stagecoach stop during its early days, and by 1898 streetcars were offering service from Kirkwood to other points in the St. Louis area.

A section of Kirkwood became a resort area catering to wealthy St. Louisans when the Meramec Highlands opened in 1895. Located on the Meramec Bluffs with a nearby spring gushing 60,000 gallons of water a day, the resort offered a large, luxury 125-room hotel and 15 rental cottages. Its rustic beauty and location made it a popular excursion point. Vacationers could dance in the large dance pavilion, bowl in the bowling alley, play billiards in the billiard hall or take a boat onto the river.

With the development of electric streetcar lines, visitors could take the St. Louis Meramec Highlands Railroad to the Highlands for a nickel. The Frisco Railroad also offered service to the Highlands. In 1895 nine trains a day and four on Sunday took visitors to the resort.

During the 1904 World's Fair, visitors could travel from downtown to the Highlands by streetcar for a nickel, but by 1905 the popularity of the Highlands waned, and it closed in 1911. The hotel burned down around 1927 but 13 of the cottages remain today. Most are private residences. Today the area is known as the Greenbriar District and much of the old resort is the site of a 400-acre subdivision.

In more recent years, Kirkwood has settled into its role as a desirable bedroom community conveniently located an easy drive from downtown, but a community with a strong historic traditions and a quiet lifestyle reminiscent of life in a small town.

In 1992 Kirkwood annexed Meacham Park, an unincorporated area of St. Louis County near Kirkwood and Big Bend Roads named for developer E. E. Meacham who plotted the area in 1892. Meacham Park was originally an African-American neighborhood settled by Kirkwood service workers.

ARCHITECTURE: One of the most intriguing things about Kirkwood is its diverse architecture. Take a drive down its streets and you will see examples of Victorian, Italian Villa, Italianate, Gothic Revival, Greek Revival, Tudor Revival, Vernacular, Eclectic, Victorian Country Classic, Victorian Italianate, Victorian Vernacular, Richardson Romanesque and Carpenter Gothic in the homes and churches of Kirkwood. The city even has a dog-trot log cabin.

The Kirkwood City Council established a Landmarks Commission in 1981 to study the city's buildings and designate structures that qualify as historical landmarks. Kirkwood has 83 structures and sites that have been designated as landmarks. Most are private homes but some are commercial buildings, churches and schools. A cemetery has also been designated as a landmark.

Five structures in Kirkwood are on the National Register of Historic Places. They are:

• Kirkwood Station which is an outstanding example of Richardsonian architecture.
• Mudd's Grove, a Greek Revival home built in 1859. The building is now headquarters for the Kirkwood Historical Society.
• A home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that is now owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright in Ebsworth Park Foundation and maintained by the St. Louis County Department of Park and Recreation.
• Turner School, located in the Meacham Park neighborhood of Kirkwood. The school, which has moderne features, is one of the last old schools in St. Louis County built to educate black children during the era of segregation.
• Eliot Unitarian Chapel, a limestone Gothic Revival church built in 1860 as Grace Episcopal Church.

Kirkwood also has two historic districts. The Meramec Highlands Historic District encompasses part of the area that was once the Meramec Highlands Resort. Three structures from the resort era are within the District--the Frisco train station where 12 trains stopped each day during the Highlands heyday, a 20-foot high train tunnel with a vaulted brick ceiling built in 1883 at the end of Barberry Lane and the former Meramec Highlands grocery store built in 1895. It is now a private residence. A one-room schoolhouse built in 1895 to serve children living in the Highlands area has been remodeled into a Colonial revival residence.

The other historic district is the Central Plaza Bungalow District in the 300 block of Central Place. The bungalows in the district date from the 1920s and are a prime example of small homes built during that time period.

Other interesting homes include:

• Brownhurst, 1201 S. Kirkwood Road, built about 1880 by St. Louis manufacturer Daniel S. Brown, an amateur horticulturist, as his country home. The shingle and limestone building is in the Richardson Romanesque style with 40 acres of the estate dedicated to gardens, conservatories and greenhouses. Brown donated many specimens from his collections of rare palms, ferns and orchids to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. The orchids became the basis of the Garden's orchid collection.
• Wisconsin House, 415 Scott Ave., built as the Wisconsin hospitality house at the 1904 World's Fair. The building won a grand prize because it "nearest fulfilled the ideal state home." After the Fair, the building was moved to Kirkwood, presumably by rail, and reconstructed as a private home.
• Hazard House, 401 Clark Ave., built in 1875. The house belonged to Rebecca Naylor Hazard, a 19th century social reformer. During the Civil War as a member of the Ladies Union Aid Society and the Freedmen's Relief Society, she cared for soldiers and newly freed slaves. She went on to organize the Woman Suffrage Society of Missouri and was elected president of the national American Woman's Suffrage Association in 1878.
• Seven Gables, 503 E. Monroe Ave., a Tudor Revival House built in 1913. The house actually has 10 gables, and the grounds covered a full block. A vast formal garden had beds of roses, peonies, and zinnias planted in different patterns. It is rumored that George Bernard Shaw had a dalliance with a young woman at the house.
• McLagan House, 549 E. Argonne Dr., an Italianate house built in the 1860's of wood siding cut and beveled to look like stone. The home was once owned by Charles Black, publisher of the Clayton Argus, and later by Ethan Allen Taussig and his wife Edith, renowned opera singers with the San Carlo Opera Company in London, and later still Phil Rau, a merchant and amateur entomologist who published studies of the mining bees he kept on the grounds.
• Pemberton-Munroe House, 345 E. Argonne Drive, a Victorian-style house with adaptations in the Italianate style, built in 1876. This is another house built from wood siding cut to look like stone.
• Cragwold, a rustic stone and stucco home built into a bluff overlooking the Meramec River in 1911 for Edwin A. Lemp, a member of the legendary Lemp Family. The house is of the Prairie School with Tudor influence. The family, which owned the Lemp Brewery in the city, built several palatial houses in the area before Prohibition. The family, though fabulously rich, was plagued by tragedy including the suicides of several family members. Today the historic Lemp Mansion in the Cherokee Antique District is a bed and breakfast and restaurant featuring murder mystery dinners.

With its historic train station and vintage buildings, downtown Kirkwood has retained the charm and warmth of a town of an earlier era although it is a modern suburb. O.K. Hatchery, Feed and Garden Store at 109 E. Argonne was built as part of Holekamp Lumber Company in 1920. The structure is typical of lumberyard buildings of that period.

The Old Post Office and Old Fire House No. 1 at 123-125 W. Argonne are now the site of the Messenger Printing Co. The firehouse was built in 1919 for $7,900. The old post office, in the colonial revival style, was built in the 1930s.

Most of the other buildings in the central business district were built in the 1800's or early 1900's.

Nipher Middle School at 700 S. Kirkwood Road is one of three schools in Kirkwood designed by St. Louis architect William Ittner who designed many schools in the city of St. Louis and around the country. It was built as Kirkwood High School in 1922.

FESTIVALS AND OTHER EVENTS: The city of Kirkwood holds its Greentree Festival with food, arts and crafts, a children's dog show, a parade and craftspeople demonstrating their skills each September in Kirkwood Park.

The festival was created in 1961 in response to an epidemic of Dutch elm disease that was sticking many of the city's beautiful, century-old trees. Residents were encouraged to plant trees to replace those being lost, and trees were sold for $1 each at the festival. Today many of those trees are mature and grace the lawns and streets of Kirkwood. The festival's link with trees and its original purpose continues to this day as a Boy Scout troop carries on the tradition of selling or giving away trees each year at the festival.

The Greentree Festival also gives residents and visitors a time to gather together and celebrate the season. In 2001, the festival went from a two-weekend event to a three-day event.

The city also holds a July 4th fireworks display at Kirkwood Park each year.

DINING: There are several restaurants in Kirkwood Junction and several vendors at the Kirkwood Farmers' Market that sell ready-to-eat food.

SHOPPING: Kirkwood Junction, Kirkwood's downtown business district has a variety of interesting unique shops. A mile south of Kirkwood Junction, Kirkwood Commons has a Target store, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and several smaller shops.

NEARBY ATTRACTIONS: The Magic House Children's Museum; Stages St. Louis, a professional musical theatre company, and the Kirkwood Theatre Guild are in Kirkwood. Kirkwood is also home to the Museum of Transportation, Kirkwood Farmers' Market and Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center.

PUBLIC RELATIONS CONTACT: Claire Budd, Public Information Officer, City of Kirkwood, 314-822-5894, buddcp@kirkwoodmo.org or Ed Ruesing, executive director of Kirkwood Junction Special Business District, 314-822-0084.

Readers should call 1-800-916-0040 to request a free copy of the Official St. Louis Visitor Guide or point, click and explore St. Louis at www.explorestlouis.com