Right along what is just plain old Florissant Road, not north or south, east of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, is this wonderful specimen of the Shingle Style, which is not widely common around this region anymore. I do not know why it is here, or who owns it. There is a garden on the property.
Wayside Community Garden. The house is the Hardy House, built in 1891 for John Mullanphy Cates and named for Thomas Walter Hardy, founder of the Hardy Salt Company and St Louis businessman, who had the longest residency there, between 1915-1966. The community garden was established in 2009 on Normandy School District property, according to the garden’s Facebook page. Like most old wooden “Victorian” houses, it has been mutilated with the application of vinyl siding and installation of vinyl windows. But the house could still be restored into a showplace with a little work.
There is a nearby Stick Style building behind it on Bermuda Drive. It appears to have originally been a stable or some other type of ancillary structure, and, other than the application of formstone (or similar product) to the first story, it is more intact with the original windows and gable woodwork.
A photograph of the Hardy House in better times, about the time Wayside Community Garden was established. https://www.flickr.com/photos/msabeln/3457645981/in/photostream/
And even better times, in a Normandy News that talks about its history and provides a historic photograph. http://www.cityofnormandy.com/DocumentCenter/View/1652/Normandy-News-Fall-2017-FINAL
Another Normandy News talks about how it escaped demolition before Wayside was opened, and that there was a group trying to restore it, which obviously did not happen because it is in worse shape now than it was when this newsletter was published in 2010. http://www.cityofnormandy.gov/DocumentCenter/View/554/2010-Winter
Woohoo! I knew a reader would know more about this house’s history!