In Saint Louis Missouri, there is a street named Oriole
Avenue. If one were to look at a map,
one would see that Oriole Avenue is in two sections, one is south of Calvary Cemetery
and the other is north. This is the
street with which we are concerned, the north section and it runs from the Cemetery to Veronica Avenue. The less important, to us, section of the street from Switzer Avenue to
Veronica was constructed in the late 1930’s.
The 8500 block of Oriole Avenue starts the north section, from the Cemetery to Switzer Avenue, and dates from around 1900. It was
owned by a man named English, who lived elsewhere; he subdivided the property and registered the plat as English Grove. There were building lots along Partridge,
Oriole, Gilmore, and Robin avenues to the railroad tracks. The remainder of the land around English Grove was farms and
generally of an elevation that increased to the north and west. The drainage of the area was toward the south
and east to a creek that ran along the base of the railroad property and
eventually drained into the Mississippi River.
At 8572 Oriole Avenue is the house, built in 1905, where my parents
lived from May of 1940 until October of 1993; my sister and I spent our
formative years in that house and it is the subject of this little memoir. One reason they bought it is that my
mother’s family lived at 8569 Oriole, across the street; her mother’s sisters
lived at 8565 and 8561 and they all built their houses from about 1900 to 1909.
The property is actually three building lots, each 30 feet wide and
125 feet deep, the northernmost running along Switzer Avenue. The house is located on the center lot of the
three and situated all the way back at the alley line. This arrangement gave the maximum area in front of the house to Oriole Avenue and put them on
the alley that would allow them access through the alley to the street at the closest
point to Holy Cross church and Baden, the church and nearest shopping area.
The original architecture was simple. The lot was thirty feet wide and so was the
house; it consisted of two rooms, each fifteen feet square with a
ceiling height of nine feet and each had a door to the outside with transom above;
each also had three large windows to allow any breeze that may be stirring to waft
through the rooms. All the windows had louvered wooden shutters that swung aside and could be closed for security.
The rooms were faced with a porch that ran the
full width of the house and was six feet wide with its own roof, turned wooden railings, and stairs aligned with the door on the right. The roof was flat and sloped slightly to the rear with some ornamental dental woodwork at the front edge to give it character. The construction was frame with clapboard siding painted white; the porch rails, shutters, and trim were a dark green.
The floor was about four feet over ground level; for good
reason. The aforementioned drainage
pattern resulted in a water run that passed through the lot about half-way back
from the street; they didn't want a basement to get water.
The area under the rooms was excavated by hand to contain a kitchen
and a root cellar enclosed with concrete walls and four windows for ventilation. Easy access to the outside
from this kitchen consisted of six steps open to the sky but they could be covered by closing two sloping doors. The kitchen had a wooden floor
about four inches above the clay dirt.
The root cellar had a clay dirt floor, cool enough to store potatoes,
carrots, and other root vegetables. It
was also used to store wine barrels that were filled annually.
On the lot to the left, as one looked out toward Oriole Avenue, were outbuildings of unpainted yellow poplar consisting of a coal and wood shed on the alley, a privy directly
across from the basement steps, then a space, then the smoke-house over a fire pit, then a utility shed for
tools and laundry. All of these were
contained on that one lot and grouped to the back of it for convenience and to maximize
the yard area.
Centered on the stairs leading to the bedrooms was a walk to
Oriole Avenue that bridged the run. On
the street side of the run was a grape arbor that went on out to the property
line. On the left lot, there were fruit
trees consisting of two cherry trees, an apricot tree, and a plum tree. The area to the right of the walk was for a
vegetable garden and lawn. The area between the outbuildings and the house was
paved with concrete to allow all-weather access to the outbuildings.
Summers in Saint Louis are hot and humid. The open plan of the house allowed the
occupants to take advantage of any breeze that stirred but from late afternoon
until they went to bed it was difficult to stay comfortable. A maple tree was strategically planted to
shade the house from the summer sun. It
lived there until 1990, about eighty-five years, when my parents had it removed because it was
becoming a safety hazard.
A major creature comfort was a large swing that hung from a sturdy frame made of 6x6's, facing Oriole Avenue, and located between the house and the tree. The couple could sit there in the shade on a hot summer afternoon and make their own breeze. This was also used to hoist pig carcasses at slaughtering time; butchering hogs was a cooperative neighborhood event in the fall and the smoke-house was used to preserve the meat.
For two people the arrangement was more than adequate. It allowed for work to be carried out in the kitchen,
food stored in the cellar, personal needs met by the out buildings, and water
from a deep well. Much of the food
consumed was raised in gardens or harvested from the trees and shared among
neighbors to allow for a good variety.
The family that built the house eventually outgrew it. To accommodate the larger number of people a
front room was added, likewise fifteen by fifteen feet with a nine foot
ceiling; the basement was likewise expanded under it. A peaked roof with dormer windows was also
added that completely changed the appearance of the house.
The room had two large windows facing Oriole
Avenue and the porch was altered to wrap around the side of the new room;
access to the room was through a door close to where the room intersected the
original house. The remaining original
doorway to the house became the main access door to what became the kitchen.
A bathroom was added on the front of the house taking part of the now enclosed porch, allowing them to abandon the privy. The pit was filled in but the concrete sides around it remained and may still be there..
A comic aside concerns the original chimney in the house. My dad was doing some work on the house in
the 1970’s to seal this chimney. Poking
around in it he found a brick and said something to his friend and neighbor who
was a bricklayer and lived on Robin Avenue.
His friend laughed when he was told about the brick because he
remembered dropping it and it fell into the chimney while they were adding to it some 50 years or so before.
This is what the
house was like when my parents bought it in 1940. It underwent major remodeling during the 53
years they lived there to finish bedrooms in the attic space and re-model the
kitchen; the wooden exterior was covered by shingles, twice and my dad did most
of the work himself.
My sister moved on
and so did I and eventually the house required more maintenance than my parents
could do. They sold it in 1993 and moved
to an apartment, then to assisted living where my dad died at the age of 90 years
and 6 months. Mom then came to live with
us and died at the age of 100 years and 8 months.
The house is still there and is inhabited, at least as far
as I can tell and there have been changes made.
The major apparent changes are a large gazebo in the front yard and a
driveway from Oriole Avenue all the way to the alley along the south property
line.
