Built 1927 Opened 1927 Added to NRHP 24 July 1984 | NRHP Reference # 84002694 Area 3,642 m² | |
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Location 2709 Locust St., St. Louis, Missouri Similar St Louis Mercantile Library, Missouri Botanical Garden, The Muny, Convention Center station, The Chase Park Plaza Hotel | ||
The YWCA, Phillis Wheatley Branch in St. Louis, Missouri is a building dating from 1927. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
The branch was founded in 1911 and named for Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American poet. It was only the fifth YWCA for African-Americans.
The YWCA was a center of intellectual life in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood. The Fisk Jubilee Singers performed at Wheatley in 1916, and W.E.B. Du Bois gave a lecture in 1922. Maya Angelou, Mary McLeod Bethune and Butterfly McQueen all visited or stayed in the YWCA's hotel rooms.
The building was constructed in 1927 for the St. Louis Women's Christian Association, also known as the Women's Christian Home, which was first organized in 1868. In 1941 they sold the building to the YWCA.