On Saturday, October 10th, 2026, Landmarks Association hosted its annual Savor the Past, Celebrate the Future event at La Verona at the Marketplace. The primary purpose of this event is to recognize an individual, couple, or entity that has made significant contributions in the field of historic preservation in the St. Louis region with the prestigious H. Meade Summers, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award. This year, Landmarks honored Guy Slay with the award for being a pioneer in restoring high-impact historic buildings in the City of St. Louis, creating dozens of residential units and vibrant commercial spaces.
Awardee Guy Slay with Landmarks
executive director Stuart Keating
Additionally, Landmarks recognized the Cultural Heritage Development Organization (CHDO) 4theVille with the Visionary Award — an honor that was first instituted in 2025 — for their stewardship of The Ville’s profound legacy via community-guided initiatives that preserve and amplify Black stories, people, and spaces.
4theVille founders & awardees (from left to right): Julia Allen, MSW, Aaron Williams, and Thomasina Clarke
The evening began with attendees gathering and enjoying refreshments provided by Catering St. Louis Events, followed by remarks from executive director Stuart Keating and the evening’s awardees: Guy Slay, and Julia Allen, MSW and Thomasina Clarke of 4theVille. Afterwards, Keating led the
attendees in a new Fund-A-Need segment that directly supported Landmarks’ Revolving Loan Fund, a program that provides flexible financing to help historic places thrive and communities grow in St. Louis. Additional commingling and celebration followed, and the evening ended with the announcement of various raffle winners.
You can view a copy of the event’s program here.
Click the arrows on either side of the gallery below to scroll through photos from the event. You can also click on a photo for a closer look:
The following is the transcript of executive director Stuart Keating’s remarks during the event:
Landmarks Association is a historic preservation non-profit whose mission is to preserve, enhance and promote Saint Louis’ historic buildings and promote smart urban design.
We’ve been protecting Saint Louis’ historic buildings, and by extension the character of its neighborhoods and the culture of our city, for 67 years.
What started as a group of Soulard residents sitting on the rooftops of buildings to prevent the blighting and clearing of Soulard for an interstate in the late 1950s has turned into the efforts of tens of thousands of people across two generations of Saint Louis history, surveying every building in the city of Saint Louis, compiling histories on significant buildings, architects and people, and working with individuals, neighborhood associations and the city government to nominate buildings to the national register for historic places and create national historic districts.
Obviously we have also, on occasion, fought with individuals, neighborhood associations and the city government to prevent the demolition of our common cultural and historical heritage. And we’ve won a good number of those, and plan to win even more.
The title of our event, Savor the Past, Celebrate the Future perfectly encapsulates what we do at Landmarks. At the core, our mission is about ensuring people across the city understand and appreciate the way that our built environment creates a common cultural link between the past and the future.
Our built environment tells the story of all of Saint Louis. We aren’t just residents of this city, we are stewards of what makes Saint Louis such a fantastic and fantastically unique place to live, for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren.
From the original Osage inhabitants of the area to the French explorers who set up a fur trading outpost to the waves of European settlement, to the Great Migration of former enslaved people seeking a new and better life outside of the deep south, to the rise of Saint Louis as a global leader and cultural manufacturing, to the determination and grit of residents who resisted the forces of suburbanization and misguided urban renewal and refused to let their neighborhood be cleared for roadways and endless parking lots, to the artists and entrepreneurs and rehabbers who make the city of Saint Louis such an exciting and joyful place to live–our buildings contain this history and shape this culture, and will do so for as long as we protect them.
We are gathered here tonight to honor and celebrate people who have committed themselves to protecting our historic buildings and telling the story of Saint Louis. We will honor Guy Slay with the H. Meade Summers Jr. award and the founders of 4theVille with the Visionary Award.
The H. Meade Summers Jr. Award is Landmarks Association’s highest individual honor, given annually to a person whose dedication has made a meaningful and enduring impact on the city’s historic fabric. And I think we can all agree that Guy Slay has made an enormous impact on the city’s historic fabric, one that continues to this day.
If you have shopped, dined out, gone dancing or gotten a haircut, tattoo or ice cream cone in The Grove, you have Guy Slay to thank.
Back in the early 2000s he decided he wanted to redevelop buildings in Forest Park Southeast, starting with the building at the Southeast corner of Manchester and Tower Grove. Forest Park Southeast was a much different neighborhood then than it is today.
The narrative about that stretch of neighborhoods was one we heard about Lafayette Square, the Central West End and Tower Grove South, what we still hear about Gravois Park, Dutchtown and North City neighborhoods today. “I wouldn’t go down there at night, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live there.” But people already did live there, and even more people live there today in a thriving neighborhood anchored by a long stretch of mixed-use development along Manchester, thanks to Guy’s efforts.
Guy’s goal was to work patiently, one building at a time, and find as many ways as possible for his redevelopment work to benefit the neighborhood.
He hired neighborhood residents to work on his construction projects and trained them into skilled tradespeople, he opened a restaurant called the Mangrove to help provide jobs, he methodically redeveloped buildings along Manchester and Tower Grove Avenue, and then along Swann in the blocks south of the grove. After he closed Mangrove to work on more real estate development, Sweetie Pie’s and later Grace Meat and Three operated out of that building. Think of the millions of good meals served on that corner over the past twenty years!
For the economics of historic restoration to work, developers frequently require historic tax credits. Those credits are only available for buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places or buildings located within a historic district.
Guy worked with the neighbors and business association along Manchester to gain consensus for a historic district, then funded the project himself, figuring he would come out ahead by helping others. And he has!
From the massive Urban Chestnut facility on the west side of the district to the dozens of smaller, beautifully restored historic buildings along the length of Manchester Avenue, you can feel the impact of his work in the vibrancy of the neighborhood as people work, shop, live and play at all hours of the day and night.
Guy Slay also commissioned the Forest Park Southeast historic tax district south of Manchester, which has led to a significant number of historic homes being rehabbed and preserved.
Now, 20 years later, we have a racially and economically diverse neighborhood with a good mix of renters and home owners anchored by a strong shopping district within walking distance. That’s the benefit of what Jane Jacobs called “slow money”–the patient, building-by-building, human centered approach that Guy has made his entire career.
Guy is now working in Visitation Park, first restoring the Blossom House, which is near the Union Avenue Christian Church and 2nd Baptist Church. He has taken an interest in the houses of A.A. Fischer, all located off of Union Avenue.
These unique buildings feature stone facades and detailing reminiscent of Victorian fairy tale castles and he has gone to great lengths to restore them, including at least one that had suffered a cataclysmic fire, and the house that A.A. Fischer built for himself.
For his continuing contributions to neighborhood development and historic preservation in Saint Louis, not to mention his endless good cheer and his support of organizations across the city, we honor Guy Slay with the H. Meade Summers Jr. Award.
The Visionary Award recognizes individuals or organizations whose forward-thinking approach advances the mission of historic preservation in ways that strengthen communities and inspire broader change.
At Landmarks, we can think of no organization more worthy of this award, or doing work that is more timely and important, than 4theVille.
A “cultural heritage development organization” centered around the neighborhoods of The Ville, The Greater Ville, Kingsway east, Lewis Place, Visitation Park and Vandeventer, 4theVille is working to undo the century of strategic disinvestment and structural racism that has piece by piece unraveled the fabric of north city and erased the history of Black Saint Louis.
In many ways 4theVille’s programs and ethos echo our own. Through their memory teller program they train docents that can offer tours of North Saint Louis and educate visitors on black history, providing unique perspectives and context that have been tragically overlooked, ignored and erased by mainstream culture.
They provided emergency assistance to victims of the 2025 tornado, which devastated the neighborhoods in which they work. And they understand that place, and the historic buildings that make up our sense of place, are critical to a flourishing community.
To that end they are developing a massive cultural tourism program centered around Martin Luther King Drive, which they are working to transform into a cultural and commercial zone with investment in public art, market plazas and support to local businesses.
We have the three founders here tonight and I want to provide a brief bio on each of them because they are all fascinating and accomplished individuals.
Aaron Williams is the president of 4theVille. While completing his degree in Architecture at Washington University, Aaron learned of the Ville’s legacy. Since then, outside his role as a Construction Project Manager, he has committed his time to restore the neighborhood’s honor by serving as the community liaison and teacher’s assistant for a course at Washington University that spotlighted the Ville and by serving on the board of Northside Community Housing. Aaron believes that art and community engagement can reinvigorate the Ville as an urban development enthusiast and design hobbyist.
Julia Allen, MSW, is the board chair. Julia is a lifelong resident of the Historic Ville Neighborhood. She has a Masters in Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University. Julia is a graduate of the American Society on Aging’s New Ventures in Leadership Program, Washington University’s Department of Surgery’s Community Research Fellows Program, the Neighborhood Leadership Fellows, Action St. Louis Fellows and most recently the Civic Collaboration Fellows . She has over 20 plus years of experience working and advocating for the Aging Network and the underserved in her community.
Thomasina Clarke is one of the Co-Founders of 4theVille. Thomasina is a lifelong resident of the Ville. She lives in the same house she came home to as a baby, and she recently purchased the house next door to help stabilize the community. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Xavier University, a Missouri Teaching Certificate, and is obtaining Masters in Library Science. As an actress, Thomasina has been nominated for two Kevin Kline awards and performed with several St. Louis theatre companies. Thomasina believes the world should know more about the legacy of the Ville.
For their commitment to preserving and restoring the history of The Ville, The Greater Ville, Kingsway East, Lewis Place, Visitation Park and Vandeventer, and centering black history in Saint Louis, we honor Aaron Williams, Julia Allen and Thomasina Clark with the Visionary Award.
