The Shanley Building
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
This Clayton structure became St. Louis' and the central Midwest's first International Style building when it was completed in 1935. Commissioned by orthodontist Leo M. Shanley and designed by St. Louis architect Harris Armstrong, the Shanley building received wide acclaim, including a silver medal at the Exposition International des Artes et des Techniques in Paris in 1937. The architectural community credited Armstrong with giving birth to the Modern Movement in St. Louis. The praise attached to the Shanley design came early in Armstrong's career, allowing him to grow into a highly successful architect whose work included several home designs for acclaimed medical professionals, federal buildings, and even the U.S. Consulate in Basra, Iraq.
Images
Shanley Building
![Shanley Building](https://storage.googleapis.com/clio-images/medium_7173_1440px-Shanley_Building.jpg)
Shanley Building
![Shanley Building](https://storage.googleapis.com/clio-images/medium_7176_ShanleyHome.jpg)
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Architect Harris Armstrong was born in 1899 on the Illinois side of the St. Louis metro area. The son of a tobacco salesman, he began his study of architecture in 1923, attending Washington University's night school while working as an office boy and draftsman for G.F.A. Bruggeman. Armstrong later spent a year at Ohio State but gained most of his architectural education by working for some of St. Louis' leading architects. Armstrong started his own practice in the early 1930s, during the early stages of the Great Depression. He experienced several lean years at the outset, but the use of the International Style in designing the Shanley Building, along with completing a few other commissions during the middle 1930s, helped his practice take off.
The International Style grew increasingly popular in U.S. cities during the 1930s. The Museum of Modern Art's landmark 1932 exhibition, organized by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, had given its name to the style and philosophy which had arisen in Europe in the 1920s. In fact, even as early as the late 1920s, houses designed in the International Style (as it came to be known) appeared on the West Coast. George Fred Keck introduced the style to the Midwest in 1929 with his Miralago Ballroom near Wilmette, Illinois, and throngs of people viewed his model houses at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair. Armstrong admired Kreck's "House of Tomorrow" exhibit at the Fair, among other works.
However, Armstrong hesitated to use the International Style in St. Louis because he viewed the community as too conservative and reactionary to support such a progressive design. Thus, the Shanely home served as Armstrong's first International Style design in St. Louis. The Architectural Record dedicated eleven pages to the now-historic home in its November 11, 1936 publication, followed by the Architectural Review in England featuring the house in its March 12, 1937 issue. That same year, photographs were displayed in the U.S. Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et des Techniques Appliques a la Vie Moderne in Paris; the Exposition awarded Armstrong a silver medal for his design.
The immediate success of the Shanley Home established Armstrong's reputation as a leader of the Modern Movement in the Midwest. By the 1940s, Armstrong's designs appeared annually in the Architectural Record. He continued to provide architectural work for medical professionals, including an International Style home for doctors Carl F. and Gerti T. Cori; they shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1947. Armstrong also built a house for Dr. Evarts Graham overlooking the Missouri River; Graham's research established the link between smoking and cancer. Additionally, he designed several medical facilities throughout suburban St. Louis.
By the 1950s, Armstrong designed significant projects in the St. Louis area, including the Magic Chef office building and the seven-million-dollar engineer campus for McDonnell-Douglas. He also designed the Federal Building in Kansas City, the officer's club at Fort Benning, Georgia, and the U.S. Consulate in Basra, Iraq. While his later work rarely attained the same praise as his earlier projects, Armstrong remained a highly respected architect forever known as the one who gave birth to the Modern Movement in St. Louis.
Armstrong retired in 1971 and died in 1973. The Shanley Building, which was almost torn down in recent years, is now included in the design of a new apartment building project, thus preserving the historic building for years to come.
Cite This Entry
Powers, Mathew and Clio Admin. "The Shanley Building." Clio: Your Guide to History. May 25, 2023. Accessed February 16, 2025. https://theclio.com/entry/168767
Sources
Hamilton, Esley. "Nomination Form: Shanley Building." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 1981. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/Shanley%20Bldg.pdf.
"Harris Armstrong Collection." Washington University in St. Louis: University Libraries. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://aspace.wustl.edu/repositories/11/resources/332.
"The Shanley Building." Missouri Preservation. September 18, 2019. https://preservemo.org/shanley-building/.
Wright, Ted. "New Clayton Luxury Apartment Plan By Developer BalkeBrown Saves Historic Shanley Building." St. Louis Style. January 7, 2022. https://www.stlouis.style/architecture/new-clayton-luxury-apartment-plan-by-developer-balkebrown-saves-historic-shanley-building/.
By Liezl Moss - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21613736
Missouri Preservation: https://preservemo.org/shanley-building/