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Reflection: A Home And A Church Remind That Real Architecture Transcends Simple Utility

Gustel R. Kiewitt
Provided by the family

After Kitty Mollman’s husband, Clay, died in the summer of 2012 after a long illness, she and her daughter, Melanie Mollman Hancock, decided it was high time to renovate their family’s home in Ladue. It needed fixing-up and painting-up; and some do-it-yourself remedies made along the way needed undoing.

If reading the word “Ladue” makes you think of grandeur of one sort or another, think again. This Ladue house on Lindworth Drive, while comfortable and roomy, is quite unpretentious, its exterior notable for its horizontality, and its interior for the generous spaces it provides and the open flow of them. But in addition to its livability, it is a house of consequence historically. Its designer, builder and initial owner is a legendary figure in American architecture and engineering. He was Gustel R. Kiewitt, the Lamella man -- Kitty Mollman’s father, Melanie Hancock’s grandfather.

Kiewitt was born in Worms, Germany, in 1902, and was educated at the University of Darmstadt and the University of Stuttgart. He arrived in St. Louis in 1924 when he was 22 years old. He was influenced by modernist movements that changed the architectural face of Europe, particularly the Bauhaus; and he brought with him thoroughly modern ideas about the creation of unfettered architectural spaces.

Lamella

Related to those ideas was his knowledge of and expertise in the construction of the Lamella roof system, a system reckoned as imminently useful in the creation of large clear-span spaces.

The Arena may have had the area's best remembered example of the lamella roof.
Credit Provided by the family
The Arena may have had the area's best remembered example of the lamella roof.

The system probably is known best here as the roof of the beloved but imploded Arena on Oakland Avenue. Its Lamella roof provided cover for a remarkable open space, measuring 476 feet long and 276 feet across. But besides being the Arena’s roof, the Lamella system was put to valuable and enduring use in a large number of buildings, some – sadly – demolished. Recently, there was a close call on Arsenal Street. It looked as if St. Elizabeth Academy’s were in jeopardy. St. Elizabeth’s gymnasium is covered with a Lamella roof, one that may be the only remaining example within the city limits. The school’s buildings have been saved, however, and are being put to good use by the International Institute, another inestimable St. Louis resource.

It’s believed, according to historian and preservationist Esley Hamilton, that Kiewitt and the Lamella system received a grand introduction to St. Louis when, in 1925, Edward Busch Faust commissioned a barn for his son, Leicester Busch Faust, at Leicester Faust’s farm in Chesterfield. The elder Faust saw gold in the Lamella roof – a system that was both novel and useful -- and he pushed for it to be used in building the Arena, a project of the National Exposition Co.

Inside the Arena, which stood at 5700 Oakland Avenue
Credit Provided by the family
Inside the Arena, which stood at 5700 Oakland Avenue

The original Faust barn still stands as one of the architectural attractions of Faust St. Louis County Park. It was rescued from ruin in the late 1990s, and its Lamella roof – which also serves as the walls of the barn – has been restored again recently. The barn is one of early applications of the Lamella roof system in the United States.

Gustel Kiewitt was its Johnny Appleseed in these parts. In addition to the Faust barn and “The Barn” (1929-1999) on Oakland Avenue, Kiewitt also planted structures roofed over in Lamella in the U.S. and abroad.  They provide open spaces for automobile dealerships and school gyms, and churches and even an American Legion post in Wellston. His firm was called Roof Structures.

Although Kiewitt didn’t invent the Lamella system – it was invented by Friedrich Zollinger in 1908 -- he certainly brought it to a prominence that would spread from St. Louis to building sites around the country and abroad, including the Superdome in New Orleans and the Astrodome in Houston, the doomed domed and so-called eighth wonder of the world.

The name Lamella is derived from the Latin word lamina, meaning a thin scale or plate. The website worldofbuildings.com describes it as “a curved roof framed by a system of intersecting skewed arches made up of relatively short members called lamellas. Each short member intersects with another member of the opposite skewed arch as each member works to form one long arch.” Like many things conceived in utility but born with beautiful features, Lamella roofs provide genuine aesthetic pleasure in their intricate simplicity and geometric elegance. Kitty Mollman suggests, “If you look at the underside of a mushroom you will see a perfect example of lamellae.”

Modern

But back to Ladue and the Kiewitt-Mollman-Hancock project, and Hancock’s account of the genesis of the renovation project and the results.

Kitty Mollman and Melanie Hancock
Credit Provided by the family
Kitty Mollman and Melanie Hancock

“The restoration began with the need to upgrade the worn out siding and soffits,” she said. “The project grew from there with the main goals being to restore original design features of the home that had been removed or covered over in previous renovation projects.

“In short,” Hancock said, “I wanted to put it back the way my grandfather had designed it. I was on site every day as project manager to make sure his intent and design style were taken into account with every decision. We were fortunate to have the original drawings and pictures of the construction from which to work. The balcony railings were fabricated following his plans.

“I was only halfway joking when I would say that I could feel both my father and grandfather looking over my shoulder every step of the way.”

Her mother enumerated essential restorations and repairs: “We restored the door in the family room.  … the balcony railings off the master bedroom as well as off the two other bedrooms. … The horizontal lines of the house are really enhanced again. We ripped off the T-111 plywood that covered the cement block basement wall. Here again we restored the horizontal lines built into the blockwork - it is not impeccable masonry, but with a great coat of paint it looks pretty darned good.

During renovation: Plywood shows where doors were replaced with windows.
Credit Provided by the family
During renovation: Plywood shows where doors were replaced with windows.

“Other than that,” she continued, “we replaced all of the old siding, some of which was still (the original) redwood, as well as the trim and soffits with James Hardie board – the same 8-inch siding, but much sturdier.”

Mollman said, “We had to put it back the way it was. We kept everything as intact as possible. We worked very hard to do it right.”

Kiewitt and his family moved to this house on Lindworth Drive in 1949 from a house he designed at Berry and Bismarck in Glendale. It was Bauhausian in inspiration, and Kitty Mollman was glad to leave it.

“As an architect, [my father] began as a devotee of the Bauhaus, which is reflected in our first home on Bismarck. By the time we moved to our present home, he had discovered Frank Lloyd Wright and had, in fact, applied to Taliesin (Wright’s architectural and cultural fellowship) early in his career.

”I liked it very much when we moved into this house; the previous one was pretty cramped, and none of the windows could be opened!“

The Lindworth Drive house is considerably different, Mollman said. “Gustel gave particular attention to site planning and materials when he designed the Ladue house. The house was situated on the corner lot to utilize passive solar energy with the large south-facing windows. The extensive use of brick inside and out collects and releases heat in the winter and keeps the house cool in the summer.

kiewitt home renovated
Credit Provided by the family
The renovated home

“He also aligned windows and doors on the house to maximize cross breezes to cool the home. The use of a large, centrally located whole house fan increases the natural air flow and reduces the need for air conditioning.”

She appreciates all this now, but Melanie Hancock, the third generation of the family to live in new house, said she didn’t like it at first.

“My friends were all in center-hall colonials,” she said. “Now I have an immense fondness for it. It provides a connection to the grandfather I never met.”

Modular design

When we look at his body of work, it’s easy to deduce that Kiewitt understood the intrinsic societal value of creating humane and pleasing spaces, be they in his own house or in the naves of churches and exhibition spaces or workplaces – any edifice that would benefit from the absence of obstructive piers or columns. These spaces are complex architectural metaphors, creating both a sense of freedom and underscoring the value of standing together in community.

Kiewitt also had democratic ideas about housing. Writing in the winter 2008 issue of the Missouri Valley Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians’ Newsletter, Marian Corley described his residential buildings. She has special knowledge of this part of his practice -- her parents, James and Marian Cummins, commissioned a house designed by Kiewitt that was built in 1949.

“To accommodate the huge need for housing after World War II, Dr. Kiewitt increased his residential work and conceived an inexpensive modular design to utilize abundant construction materials of that time such as marine plywood, which we used for both the interior and exterior walls of the houses,” Corley wrote.

The style of the house has come to be categorized as mid-century modern, if for no other reason than to distinguish these dwellings from tract houses with colonial pretentions. The Cumminses were artists who appreciated the flexibility of the floor plans and a price that fit their budget and their needs.

The back of the house Mollman and Hancock renovated
Credit Provided by the family
The back of the house Mollman and Hancock renovated

Their house in Oakland was built from one of Kiewitt’s modular plans, with customizations made by the Cumminses. Corley wrote that Kiewitt’s first residential design was executed in in Kirkwood in 1933 for Edgar W. Denison, another immigrant to St. Louis from Germany, who was the author of, and photographer and illustrator for the book “Missouri Wildflowers,” published by the Missouri Department of Conservation.

One of Kiewitt’s houses, pricier in its day and now demolished, was in the Graybridge Lane neighborhood in Ladue. This architecturally fascinating neighborhood was inspired by the late architect Isadore Shank and associates, and the house he designed and built there for his family still stands. Like the Kiewitt house, the Shank house remains in the family -- and in the assiduous care of his son, Peter

If you think of history as a fluid, ever-changing, ever expanding vista, as a quality that absorbs all connections and overlappings and events large and small, you begin to see that nothing is discreet, nothing is far from the main, as John Donne observed. All is coalescence, and all the elements are alive and relevant. If you embrace this perspective -- history as organic vista, as coalescence -- it is possible, even inevitable to make a connection between a discussion of the work of a brilliant German immigrant named Gustel Kiewitt and events of recent times in this region.

Kiewitt is a fixed star in the architectural firmament, although his formidable talents have manifested themselves not in prepossessing monuments but most notably in their applications to ceilings that float in the air, his roofs of buildings.

An upward sweep

On Wednesday night after Michael Brown was killed this August, the Rev. Traci Blackmun opened the doors of her church, Christ the King United Church of Christ on Halls Ferry Road in Florissant, and made the sanctuary available to an interfaith gathering of about 400 folks.

christ the king florissant
Credit Provided by the family
Christ the King under construction

A number of local and state officials were on the platform, but more importantly, the pews and aisles were crowded with confused, angry, sympathetic and sorrowing members of the community trying to make sense of the weekend’s tragedy and of the protests forming and festering in the adjacent city of Ferguson.

Architecture always matters; it has special consequence in times of trouble. If a building or intentionally designed open space deserves distinction as “architecture,” it must transcend simple utility, and in its most noble manifestations architecture rises to serve and affect the mind and the spirit. Christ the King Church itself, and the upward sweep of its roof, operate in that noble, symbolic way.

The roof sheltering the clear-span open space is a folded plate system, another roof system in Kiewitt’s repertory. The church itself was designed by the architectural firm of Manske + Dieckmann, now Manske Dieckmann Thompson of Chicago, and built in 1960. Kiewitt assisted in the design and execution of the roof.  In terms of symbolism and of utility, the imposing space could serve no better purpose than welcoming a group of citizens eager to listen and to learn.

That Wednesday evening at Christ the King will not be forgotten soon by those of us who were in the congregation. Nor will our visit to the house in Lindworth Drive, where hard work and memory raise up,  like a sturdy and comely roof, a monument to the architect, father and grandfather who created it.

Robert W. Duffy reported on arts and culture for St. Louis Public Radio. He had a 32-year career at the Post-Dispatch, then helped to found the St. Louis Beacon, which merged in January with St. Louis Public Radio. He has written about the visual arts, music, architecture and urban design throughout his career.