Time Capsule: Revisiting the holiday past in the period rooms 

Period rooms at SLAM came into fashion over a century ago. Popularized at other major European and American art museums, these curated spaces typically placed historic furnishings and other objects within a gallery to represent an interior during a specific period. In 1926, Samuel L. Sherer, the third director of what was then known as the City Art Museum (now Saint Louis Art Museum), noted a great need for period rooms to be installed at the Museum and advocated for their placement. 

The opening of the first such rooms—the English Charlton House, Kempshot House, Prinknash Park, Wingerworth Hall, and the French Pomponne Parlor—occurred during the winter season of 1929–1930. At the three-and-half-hour-long grand opening, 1,100 visitors tracked through the Museum on a cold winter day to see the new English and French period rooms, with staff members on hand to field questions. In the subsequent decades, these period rooms would become a festive interior backdrop for wintertime events. 

This historic gallery map shows the location of these rooms. Many changes have occurred in the galleries since this 1934 map was made, including the gallery numbering system. The suite of English and French period rooms once occupied Galleries 17a–c, 21, and 22, now known as Galleries 222–224.

An English Christmas at the Charlton House Room

The Charlton House Room officially opened to the public on Saturday, January 11, 1930. Representing the interior design and decorative arts of the English period of George I, circa 1735, this room was encased in rich pine paneling. Joseph Pulitzer Sr. presented the room and the majority of the room’s period furnishings as a memorial to his first wife, Elinor Wickham Pulitzer. The Charlton House’s built-in bookcase and marble fireplace mantel, adorned in seasonal greenery, set a cozy scene for educational tours.

As shown above, in December 1964, the Women’s Committee of the Friends of the Art Museum decorated the Charlton House with holly, mistletoe, and other greenery to recreate an English Christmas scene for the Festival of Lights, a Museum-organized event in which 200 schoolchildren participated in tours about different winter holiday celebrations. 

Caroling in the Morlaix Gothic Court

On Tuesday, December 8, 1931, the Museum unveiled the Morlaix Gothic Court—a French period room highlighting the Museum’s medieval collection—just past what is now called Grigg Gallery. The Morlaix Gothic Court’s signature oak staircase, half-timbering work, and branching balcony with linenfold paneling provided an ideal location for one of the Museum’s longest-running holiday traditions at the time: Girl Scout Carolers.

Starting with the 1929 holiday season, the St. Louis Girl Scouts annually gathered at the Museum to sing Christmas carols. Dressed in medieval costumes of red, green, purple, and blue, the Girl Scout Carolers would stroll through corridors and stop at various galleries to perform. The Morlaix Gothic Court was a popular starting location for the carolers to sing from the balcony to the audience gathered below. This yuletide caroling tradition spanned through the 1960s. 

The Morlaix Gothic Court also served as the venue for the Museum Shop’s Christmas Sale in the mid-20th century. Operated by the Friends of the Museum, the sale featured holiday ornaments, decorations, and unique imported goods procured during special buying trips. The 1959 Christmas in Morlaix sale, for example, included hand-carved Swedish decorations, Italian tree lights, and aluminum puffs (a type of lighting fixture). An image of a 17th-century, limestone French fireplace in the Morlaix Gothic Court was incorporated into the 1959 invitation to the Christmas Sale event, shown below.

Additional period rooms representing early American interiors were added to the lower level in the 1930s. The period rooms on Level 2, including the Morlaix Gothic Court, were meticulously dismantled starting in 1975 as part of large-scale renovations on the Museum campus. Six period rooms—the Charleston Room, the Alexandria Room, the Newburyport Room, the Salem Room, the French Room, and the English Room—reopened in 1989 as part of the new Decorative Arts wing on Level 1. These remaining period rooms can still be viewed today, from a safe distance to prevent damage to the objects on display.  

To learn more about past holiday celebrations and the period rooms, you can visit the Museum Archives inside the Richardson Memorial Library.