One of the things that I love about Benton Park is the wild mish-mash of architectural influences. Walking through the neighborhood, you’ll see all sorts of things mixed together, and all realized in good old St Louis red brick. My favorite architectural theme in the neighborhood has to be the Second Empire mansard roof. But there’s absolutely no consistency, and you see all kinds of different variations.
“Second Empire” refers to the imperial reign of Napoleon III, in France. He wanted to modernize France and make Paris the most beautiful city in the world. During his rule, Paris was transformed from a cramped, medieval city into a modern metropolis.
Most of the buildings in our neighborhood were built at the tail-end of Napoleon III’s time, between the years 1878 and 1904. The graphic below shows the age of buildings in our neighborhood. Benton Park came into existence right when Paris was at its most stylish, influential, and dazzling. La Belle Époque.
For St Louisans living during these years, trends from Paris were cosmopolitan, sophisticated, fashionable. Mansard roofs had been around in Paris for ages, but were not common here. A mansard roof is essentially a hip roof that has been modified to have steeper sides and a flatter top. Changing the roof like this turns the interior from a dark, awkward attic into a livable space.
In the mid-1800s, builders in St Louis weren’t really doing hip roofs. What kind of buildings were they doing here? The painting below is a depiction of the St Louis riverfront in 1846.
The painting doesn’t show great detail. And how true-to-life was this painting anyway? No matter. One thing is noticeable for sure: no hip roofs. The buildings are essentially just brick boxes, with the sides a bit higher and with a boring roof spanning the in-between. There are plenty of houses from that era still standing in Benton Park today.
How did builders change their methods to incorporate stylish, fashionable mansard roofs? With minimal actual structural changes, that’s how. The picture below on the left is the same 1863 Civil War era house that is shown above. Imagine extending the brick sides upward, and making the roof steeper. Et voila. St Louis style mansard roof.
But many buildings in the neighborhood go further, allowing the steeply-sloped mansard to wrap around the sides a little. The photo below is our very own building, shown on a dreary day last spring.
It’s not the full four-sided mansard, but it gives that impression from the street.
But the neighborhood is full of variety. Here are pictures from the blocks surrounding our house.
Something odd that I hadn’t paid attention to before is that a lot of the buildings wrap the mansard roof around one side, but have the brick wall extend all the way up to the top of the roof on the other side.
There are a lot of examples like this. I can’t think of any structural reason why this would be better. I guess it was just another style at the time.
You can absolutely see the Parisian influence. Check out the 1878 painting of the Paris street-scene below, compared to the Benton Park building.
But the size of the building doesn’t matter. Here is an adorable little house.
A lot of the buildings in the neighborhood are showing their age.
But there are many that have been beautifully restored. This next one is just down the block from us. We’ve been watching this place get fixed up for a while, and the scaffolding finally came down a few weeks ago. The mansard roof looks amazing.
Theses next few are also down the block from us on Sidney street.
And the trend continues today. Adding to the wild mish-mash of style that is our neighborhood.
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