St. Louis board approves Eugene Field House addition

A library and conference space are included in plans for an expanded museum at the Eugene Field House, the poets boyhood home in downtown St. Louis.

The expansion would be in a one-story, 4,000-square-foot addition connected to the house by an elevated, glass-walled walkway.

Members of the St. Louis Preservation Board voted Monday to grant the plan preliminary approval. The house, built at 634 South Broadway in 1845, is a National Historic Landmark and a City Landmark.

Architect Dennis Tacchi, of Eureka, designed the addition, which would be on the site of Walshs Row, a dozen attached houses demolished in 1936 except for the Field House. Its windows and stone sills recall the sites row houses.

Betsy Bradley, the citys cultural resources officer, pointed out to the board that the walkway is the only portion of the project covered by city and federal landmark preservation rules.

Fundraising for the $2.7 million project is underway. The Eugene Field House Foundation hopes to begin building the addition next year, said Kimberly Larson, the foundations director.

The addition would house an expanded version of the foundations Dred Scott exhibit. Eugenes father, Roswell Field, was a lawyer who had prepared a court appeal for Scott, a slave who had sued for his freedom.

Larson said in an interview before the board meeting the addition also would give the museum room to display a large collection of Fields poetry and writings its current owner plans to donate to the foundation.

Eugene Field was born in the Greek Revival-style house Sept. 2, 1850. He lived there only six years until his mother died. Eugene and a brother then went to live with relatives in Massachusetts.

He returned to St. Louis in 1876 to work for five years at the Evening Journal. He earned fame in 1888 for the poem Little Boy Blue. Newspaper readers knew him as a satirist. He was a columnist in Chicago when he died in 1895 at age 45.

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St. Louis board approves Eugene Field House addition