ARCH_500-600 Options Studio: ‘A Flirtation With Castlewood’

In the mid-1970s Castlewood State Park (Ballwin, Missouri) was created within an existing landscape, but also from the remains of a once thriving resort community along the Meramec River. On summer weekends in the early 1900s, thousands of St. Louisans traveled by train to the resort as a respite from the heat, pollution, and congestion of the city. Excited visitors arrived at the Castlewood Train Depot, climbed the grand concrete stairway, and scattered to hotels, clubhouses, cabins, shops, dancehalls, and speakeasies. From atop the majestic 250-foot limestone bluffs, breathtaking views spread out over the free-flowing Meramec River below. At the bottom of the bluffs, visitors ferried across the river to a large man-made sandbar known as Lincoln Beach while others arrived from east and west in small boats and canoes. 

To uncover the (his)story of Castlewood Camp in its active phase between World War I and World War II and over the following 30 years of its decline, is a frustrating effort for the curious. A wade through unfiltered internet information offers a story with missing passages, dangling threads, and weak signals from a past already muffled by time. An “architect sleuth” is needed to search for clues; piece together dates, places, and events; construct maps; organize photographs; and document physical traces. Several blogs dedicated to recounting experiences of Castlewood have been generated over the years; however, these blogs are like the whisper game in which messages are blurred and distorted but still retain grains of truth. 

The most concrete evidence for Castlewood’s story is formed from rather banal vestiges in the landscape: the ruin of the once grand staircase now mostly hidden by deep foliage, remnants of the reservoir that stored water for the resort, an abandoned castle-like building, and the partial concrete structure of a former bridge. Today’s park offers public leisure space with activities that support the current values of health, well-being, and relaxation in nature. Many park programs share those of the former Castlewood Camp—hiking, horseback riding, canoeing, bicycling, and fishing. The unpredictable Meramec River no longer permits swimming, and the camp swimming pool, originally fed by an artesian spring that flowed through a mineral deposit of salt, has been filled. Lodging and partying venues have disappeared. 

Students in this studio imagined a third iteration for Castlewood. The multiple layers and simultaneous, overlapped realities of this place sparked imaginations to render possible futures. The studio began in a liminal space, in the moment between the park and its blurry past—and what it might become. Current park programs and spaces could remain, but be altered, while past activities could be reconsidered and given new vitalities and future programs could be proposed. Transformation could be created through erasures, reclamations, or additions. Students engaged multiple scales of the environment from the territory of park, town, river, and landscape to the more intimate scale of architecture. An alternative gaze and a triple vision were needed to maintain a fluid palimpsest.