Media
St. Louis At Home, July/Aug 2007: "Shank's Lair" (photos)
St. Louis At Home, January/February 2007: "Losing Harris Armstrong" (article & photos)
St. Louis magazine, November 2006: "The Monroe Doctrine" (article & photos)
St. Louis At Home, Sept/Oct 2006: "House In Danger" (photos)
St. Louis At Home, July/August 2006: "Modern Indifference" (quote)
FAREWELL A pictorial and written history of a once-beloved shopping center, and a document of its final dying days.
Photos Added to the Portfolio: Music + People
Modern
Preservation
In the 21st Century, people finally get that architectural
preservation is good, both historically and financially. We should now expand
our thinking on what's worth saving.
The history of St. Louis begins at the urban core, and that history continually evolves. To merely concentrate on one chapter is a disservice to the entire story. Cars and interstates changed our landscape, suburbia happened. The environments created by these events have their own architectural character, and there is beauty amidst the chaos.
The GI Generation embraced a modern architectural language to create new frontiers. The Baby Boomers were born and raised in these modern settings. They are now officially part of our history, and the better examples are just as deserving of preservation as any of the buildings downtown.
St. Louis is widely known and admired for its large, pristine stock of pre-1930s architecture, but the continuing saga of its development is what fascinates me. I'm constantly impressed and moved by the aesthetic beauty of our city's modern architecture, but also saddened by how much of it is ignored, abandoned, remuddled or demolished. It feels as if we're embarrassed by our mid-century progress, and I see no valid reason for the wholesale dismissal of those chapters of our story.
Modernism happened, and
it's now time to crank up the preservation mindset by a few decades. A younger
generation will have to make protecting 1930s-1960s modern architecture a
new priority. My passion is to depict the beauty of St. Louis' ever-evolving
built landscape. My hope is that these photographs could inspire someone to
recognize worth they might have overlooked before. My goal is to help preserve
the important pieces of our Mid-Century history.
Images
and Text ©2007 Toby Weiss. Unauthorized usage is prohibited.
