Early memory mansard

Claychester cleaners in Kirkwood.  One of my first mansard memories.  When I was grade school age, we lived in Brentwood and my grandparents lived in an apartment in Kirkwood.  We used to drive on Manchester to visit them passing Claychester cleaners each time.  I don't remember if this was the same site but the orange lettering has not changed.

Those were fun times for me.  Holidays at their house was all about beer, white tableclothes, Blue Nun wine and laughter. It was always a fun, loud time at my grandparents.  But looking back I realized now it was a very hard time for my grandparents.  My grandfather was a marketing exec for Falstaff beer and lost his job around 1975 when operations collapsed.  Click here for the full story:  FALSTAFF    He and my grandmother had to sell their house in Kirkwood and downsize to an apartment.  Not long thereafter my grandfather was diagnosed with bone cancer and died.  Very sad.

Sugar Creek

I serve on a board of a needlepoint store operated by the alum club of my college sorority.  Don't like sororities?  Think needlepoint belts are silly?  Deal with it.  The store is entirely volunteer run and profits are donated yearly to deserving charities.

We had a board meeting recently and I really wasn't in the mood to coordinate the logistics of making it to the meeting with my husband out of town.  But I made it and imagine my surprise to see this structure on the property of the hostess of the party.

This description from the city of Kirkwood says I better than I can:

Henry Hoch purchased 40 acres along Sugar Creek from the U.S. Government in 1837 for a farmstead which grew to include a dogtrot cabin, farmhouse, barn and stone smoke house. The property ran up the side of a steep hill and was heavily wooded. First he built the dogtrot cabin with space between the two end rooms for a horse and cow. When a barn was built a year or two later, the cabin's middle room was converted to a kitchen. 


In 1870, the Hoch family hired Kossuth Strohm, a carpenter who lived across Sugar Creek, to build a two-story frame house. During the years, family quarried limestone on their property for the foundations of early Kirkwood buildings. Philip and Mary Hallet Gronemeyer, nationally recognized artists, made this farmstead their home for many years. The property has been subdivided and ten new houses have been built. The cabin was carefully dismantled and reassembled elsewhere. The barn and stone smoke house remain


The way I understand it, the barn sat between two new houses.  The hostess of the party bought it from her neighbor to the east, who I think are the Gronemeyer folks or their descendants.  Leave it to the girl from Soulard to show up at a party and talk about old houses with the hostess' husband.

Appartement

Kirkwood Road (aka Lindbergh) apartment building. When I was a kid my grandmother lived in Kirkwood. She'd ask my mom to 'run up to Skaggs' and we'd pass this place on our way there.

Mansard bleu

This is kind of a reverse screwed up mansard.  Usually the building itself is good and the roof is bad.  I love what happened here:  the mansard looks great, but the building is goofy.  In Kirkwood on Monroe near Kirkwood Road.

Kirkwood Mansard with Greek columns (of course)

Check out this big, stupid, ugly mansard in Kirkwood on Kirkwood Road (aka Lindbergh Road).  Of course it's stupid and ugly- it's in Kirkwood!  Webster High School class of 1989 rocks!  (this is in jest- I sadly lacked all forms of school spirit or municipal pride).  So anyway, this is a big ugly bank in the middle of a parking lot with a dumb, oversized mansard.  Love the faux Greek columns.  Oh, didn't you know that Greek columns, mansard rooflines and barberry bushes were all the rage in Second Empire France?