Walt Lockley

Lubricious Glory Regained

Union Station, St. Louis

Think of St. Louis now as an elderly spinster, think of the 1904
World's Fair as her prom night, her one climax of sexy glory long
ago, followed by decades of fruitless celibacy. Union Station was
built to prepare for the Fair. In 1900 St. Louis was a force nearly
equal to Chicago but somehow things fell apart after that.
(Bribing Mrs. O'Leary was a great idea but didn't take.) So if the
World's Fair was prom night, Union Station would have been the
carriage - uh, it would have been the cheap hotel room, well my
metaphor's fallen apart.

But Union Station is tangible proof that those days weren't just a
dream, and after years of neglect it's a critical civic asset again.

The station was first designed by Theodore Link, modeled on the
medieval French fortified city of Carcassone, whose outer walls
were built in the 13th Century. Thanks Ted. It is impressive from
the outside; it looks not only permanent but God-given. For long
years it was the long-distance and commuter transport hub of
the city, the locus of civic energy, men in fedoras whipping this
way and that, but then all that energy disappeared to the airport
way out of town and left the station to urban decay and
creeping blight.

In the 70's Union Station was like the abandoned stone palace in
Beauty and the Beast. Fairy-tale kind of place. I can close my eyes and see the Amtrak
station when it was set up downstairs, a temporary convention
booth sort of thing with power cables taped down to the floor.
Massive plaster chandeliers had crashed to the floor and never
been swept up. The surroundings were ruined and rat-infested
but still majestic enough to humiliate this little intruder, the
fluorescent blue Amtrak sign glaring so completely out of place.
And these cold granite spaces echoed with the sound of Amtrak
employees persistently not answering the phone. For some
reason all that reminds me of Jimmy Carter.

To cut history short, the great A.L. Rouse used then-current tax
law as a lever to rescue this place and, by extension, what was
left of the mental health of the city. Now, astonishingly, it's still
economically healthy. (It is, by the way, close to a MetroLink
stop.)

Forget the former train shed in the back, it's an enclosed mall and
really nothing special unless you like fudge shows and Hooters.
Forget the hotel for now, although it's a great hotel. Concentrate
on the main room, the room you enter from the Market Street
entrance. It's the Hyatt Regency's lobby and a comfortable bar
now. Take a seat, order a White Russian, and let your eyes
wander around one of the best public spaces in the country.

To begin with, it's both the perfect size and perfect shape for
human scale; it's haptically intricate and visually fascinating, like
the plaster light-bearing women emerging from the end walls, but
not visually intrusive. Acoustically, the barrel vault shape
manages the environment and creates a sonic texture, if there is
such a phrase, the kind of public background murmur you want. Notice
the way it capitalizes on very little daylight. There's a whole
elegant language of arches going on here. Notice the color
balance and detail based on natural plant-curve patterns, which
would remind me of Louis Sullivan if Sullivan hadn't been such a
show-off.

All these things at once. And notice how people behave in here.
It's a civilizing room. It's a room that reminds me that
architecture is mostly a lost art.

Thanks Ted.

And if you have time, stroll out to the long fountain across the
street, the Meeting of the Waters, by the Swedish nut Carl
Milles. From the bellhop stand of the Hyatt it appears to be just
another formal Versailles sort of thing. Up close it had shows you
an outlandish cartoonish Tex Avery sense of humor, then, then
there's a single moment when you realize this very public set of
sculptures is sort of a drama, a drama that's. . . . deeply
psychosexual. No kidding. This didn't escape the city fathers,
who had strong reservations about using tax dollars to put this
fishy thing up.

Photos: Historic American Buildings Survey.