As the only permanent structure built for the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis—an event which looms large in the collective consciousness of the city to this day—the Cass Gilbert-designed Palace of Fine Arts, later known as the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), persists as a cultural and architectural icon. The handsome neoclassical pile sits atop a rolling hill in the town’s beloved Forest Park, where admission through its porticoed main entrance to view an encyclopedic collection has remained free for over a century.
Needless to say, alterations to the museum—including a patterned brick addition at the rear of the building and a distinctively postmodern Charles Moore-designed West Grand Stair—were met with resistance and controversy. British architect Sir David Chipperfield has largely been spared such polemics with his modest design for the new East Building, opening June 29.
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