This week Landmarks Association presents a lecture and a tour related to the impact of the City Beautiful movement on downtown park space:
Lecture: "Making Parks in the Central City: The Evolution of the Gateway Mall"
When: Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Architecture St. Louis, 911 Washington Avenue, Suite 170
Michael R. Allen will give a provocative illustrated lecture on the evolution of the Gateway Mall, the never-finished downtown park mall. Starting in the early 20th century with the local City Beautiful movement and the idea of creating parks in the crowded central city, the mall project moved through various plans, revisions and missed opportunities. The city's 2007 Gateway Mall Master Plan is only the latest attempt to make sense of an idea gone astray in its implementation. Recent discussion about "activating" the Arch grounds renews attention on downtown's park problem: more open space than activity. Free.
Walking Tour of Memorial Plaza
When: Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
Location: Meet at East entrance to the Civil Courts Building, 11th and Market streets.
Envisioned as a monumental civic center, the city's Memorial Plaza area contains a distinguished group of grand public buildings, including the Civil Courts, former Federal Courthouse, City Hall, Municipal Courts, Kiel Opera House, Soldiers Memorial and the Central Library. Led by veteran downtown tour guide Richard Mueller, our tour will cover the buildings and parks that make up the plaza area, with planned stops inside some of the buildings. Reservations requested: 314-421-6474. Free.
This program is part of "Architecture Weekends," generously funded by the Whitaker Foundation.
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3 comments:
In case you don't advertise all these events on your blog, is there an email distribution list for these free lectures and walking tours? Or perhaps an RSS feed to a calendar for these events?
Landmarks Association has a mailing list:
http://groups.google.com/group/landmarks-association-of-st-louis
I never saw the sense of tearing down the Buder Building et al. The point of a park is to provide relief from urban density, and downtown St. Louis's problem is that it doesn't have enough density. It would have been much better to keep the buildings in place. Blame Richard Ford and Ed Trusheim.
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