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USA - MISSOURI : TOUCHING MISSOURI'S HISTORY by Mike Murray   Missouri’s past is not locked up in the cold print and fading images of history books. Across the state, some 300 historic districts, all listed on the National Register of Historic Places, allow visitors to see, touch and walk around in the state’s history.A sampling of these districts suggests their richness and variety – and the delights awaiting travelers to the Show-Me State. Tiny Caledonia in Washington County is a historic district unto itself with enough houses and commercial buildings dating to the mid-1800s to appear as a typical Ozark village of horse-drawn days. The Old Stone Hill Historic District in Hermann features an underground labyrinth of 19th century, arched stone wine cellars, a dramatic (and operational) reminder of Missouri’s glory days as a national leader in wine production.
Many of Missouri’s historic districts commemorate the commercial activities that animated the state’s past. Two Washington Avenue districts in St. Louis celebrate that city’s 19th century prowess in clothing and shoe manufacturing. Warehouses on the old street have been transformed into residential loft spaces. Restaurants, clubs, shops and theaters now line the sidewalks. The Missouri River town of Lexington, in Lafayette County, is well known for its Civil War battlefield and antebellum homes. But busy offices and quality shops along Main and Franklin streets (the Commercial Community Historic District) have channeled the town’s commercial pulse since the 1840s. Springfield, in southwest Missouri, boomed with rail traffic around 1900. Its Commercial Street Historic District bustles with six blocks of galleries, antique shops and “shabby chic” emporiums. Trains still rumble under the restored Jefferson Avenue Footbridge. Small-town Chillicothe in northern Missouri called itself “The Highway City” in the early 1900s when two pioneering automobile routes intersected there. Today’s motorists often exit highways 65 and 36 to survey the downtown historic district and its dozens of structures built between the Gay Nineties and World War II eras. Highlights include the five-story Strand Hotel completed in 1925, the hipped-roof Federal Building constructed during the first Wilson Administration and the Scruby Brothers Building, a Victorian structure where recessed entryways first welcomed shoppers in 1893. Many small town and big city Missouri neighborhoods have special stories to tell. Their architectural and social legacies are revealed in equally special historic districts. Civil War battles and raids largely destroyed Jasper County’s Carthage. But it recovered in grand style in the late 1800s when profits from a local lead and zinc mining boom financed elaborate Queen Anne and other Victorian-style mansions throughout the town. Well-preserved specimens grace tree-lined streets in the Cassill Place and South historic districts. On Kansas City’s east side, the Santa Fe Place Historic District preserves a largely intact neighborhood of bungalows and “Shirtwaist” houses built between 1901 and 1921. Called “Santa Fe” because the old trail had crossed there, the district signaled Kansas City’s desire to abandon the chaos of its frontier past for the stability of a planned, residential future. After 1948, when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed restrictive housing covenants based on race (like the one at Santa Fe Place), the district became home to many of Kansas City’s black leaders and professionals. At different times, both Satchel Paige and Walt Disney lived in the neighborhood. Just north of the St. Louis city limits, the Pasadena Hills Historic District tells another story about 20th century American neighborhoods. This suburban development was planned in the 1920s, just as the American middle class was taking to the motor car. Unlike the city it left behind, Pasadena Hills had parkways and curving lanes, small lakes and green spaces. The district survives in close-to-original condition and still bills itself as “The Garden Spot of St. Louis County.” Perhaps nothing fills the storehouse of historical nostalgia like the courthouse square, where children cavorted on fair-weather lawns and old men rested with their opinions and their memories. Many such squares in Missouri have merited historic district status, preserving that idyllic past and displaying a surprising degree of individuality. There’s a unique “double square” in Edina, government seat of Knox County. The courthouse grounds there face the old schoolhouse grounds, and the business district surrounds both. Commercial buildings on the south and west sides of the historic district feature ornate, pressed-metal facades, now a century old. The Harrisonville Courthouse Square Historic District in Cass County is dominated by a yellow brick, Italian Renaissance courthouse, complete with a looming tower that would not be out of place in Florence or Venice. Restored 19th century buildings and cobblestone streets enclose the square, where restaurants and antique shops add to the pleasure of walking around in Harrisonville history. In West Plains, a south Missouri community in Howell County, visitors to the Courthouse Square Historic District are struck by a square that’s almost round. Based on the 18th century layout of Lancaster, Pa., streets enter the “square” at the middle of each side rather than at the corners. The resulting closed-in, nearly circular street pattern lends the feel of an open-air arena, a perfect setting for community events and neighborly visiting. Many of Missouri’s national historic districts don’t fit well into broad, general categories. Arrow Rock, in Saline County, serviced westering pioneers in the early 1800s. Streets, taverns, churches, houses and cemeteries there shape a 19th century time warp. Although it prospered in the same era, Augusta, in St. Charles County, displays architecture, farmsteads and wineries reflective of a dominant German-American agricultural community. Both towns are national historic districts. Missouri’s first state capitol has been restored in the city of St. Charles, but it’s just one among blocks of shop-filled restorations near the riverfront where Lewis and Clark stopped twice. The best collection of French colonial buildings in the United States adorns the narrow streets of Ste. Genevieve, located south of St. Louis on the banks of the Mississippi. St. Louis itself boasts a number of historic districts, including the leafy Soulard neighborhood whose outdoor market has bustled for more than two centuries, and the lively Loop area where music escapes the crowded clubs and drifts along the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Up river from the big city, Hannibal celebrates its rough-and-tumble steamboat days and directs visitors to the numerous locales that Mark Twain fictionalized. Between St. Louis and Hannibal lies little Clarksville, where potters, glass blowers, woodworkers and other artisans demonstrate their crafts in renovated riverfront shops. The mid-Missouri river town of Rocheport claims overland freight routes, lumbering ferries and belching steamboats as parts of its history. Civil War guerrillas occupied the town and locomotives roared through in the 1890s. Across the Missouri River, not far to the west, lies Boonville, an outdoor museum of architectural history with more than 350 structures on the National Register of Historic Places. In far western Missouri, rolling tobacco fields surround Weston, where merchants outfitted emigrants on the Oregon and California trails. Modern visitors delight in the Weston townscape that’s largely untouched by the 20th century. To the south, the historic districts in Jackson County include one in Independence named for Harry Truman. He strode the local sidewalks and lived in the big house at 219 N. Delaware when not at home in the White House. Kansas City’s 18th and Vine district spotlights the city’s jazz heritage and Negro Leagues baseball. Two national historic districts in Taney County celebrate the tourism industry in southwest Missouri. Thousands of vacationing Americans began flocking to Hollister a century ago, drawn by the oddity of Tudor-style buildings clustered in the rural Ozarks. The unlikely structures are still there, housing shops, galleries and restaurants, and they’re still drawing tourists. In old-town Branson, the lakefront city park that had welcomed travelers since 1917 was enhanced in the 1930s by native stone bleachers built by New Deal work crews. Many Branson tourist attractions have come and gone over the years, but the park and the bleachers survive. Missouri history is a lively affair, from hilltop vineyards to prairie farms, from Ozark hamlets to suburban greenery, from French trading posts to Victorian mansions to tidy bungalows, from rustic village greens to urban African-American enclaves, from railroad boomtowns to Depression recovery projects. The state’s 300 national historic districts are tangible and engaging reasons to “VisitMO.” Photo courtesy Greater Saint Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau
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