In Webster Groves, there’s a little street that slopes down into a valley. You may have seen it; it’s not far from the bus bridge. It has the big trees and old homes that make it look like any street in Webster.

But the odd thing is, when you walk down that street you realize the third house on the left isn’t a house at all. There’s a marquee and bright lights out front. It’s the Theatre Guild of Webster Groves. And the little street is Theatre Lane.

Walk inside and you’ll realize the theatre was indeed once somebody’s home. There are three tiny bathrooms and a kitchen. Two dressing rooms and a meeting room undoubtedly were dining and living rooms long ago. Go upstairs to the auditorium. You won’t see any bedrooms but a small stage and seats for an audience of 147. 

How did it turn from a home into a theatre? Who comes here and why? And how did all this start, anyway?

To answer those questions, you have to go back 50 years -- and the ladies’ rest room. There, in cabinets that once held towels and sheets, are dusty scrapbooks, yellowed newspaper clippings, stacks of old photographs. You’ll find a story of many people, some talent, a lot of work and more good times than anyone can remember. The whole thing began in an era of the Black Bottom and the Varsity Drag. And, it happened like this.

One evening in 1926, a group of about 20 friends met at a home in Webster Groves to form a nonprofessional theater group. It started out slowly. They performed plays wherever they could find a place--church parlors, someone’s dining room, the Monday Club. In the summertime, a few plays were even performed outside--in members’ backyards. It was a casual organization. Props and costumes were stored in attics, basements and garages.

Gradually, the membership grew and a formal Theatre Guild was formed. The group performed five three-act plays a year on the stage of the Webster High School auditorium. Plays like "An Inspector Calls," "Night Must Fall" and "Little Women", which according to the St. Louis Star Times of 1948, played to "capacity crowds."

The group stayed together--rehearsing lines, painting: sets, sewing costumes--during the depression and a World War. And, in the 40s, it was no small task casting a play that required young men. Later, the Guild gave benefit performances for flood relief programs and the March of Dimes. Membership drive parties at the Crystal Lake Country Club interested more and more people in the Theatre Guild.

As the 1950’s arrived there seemed to be only’ one thing the Guild lacked--a building to call its own. A building had long been the dream of the members but there was always that age-old problem--money.

Then one day in 1950, four members were sitting around a kitchen table drinking coffee and discussing "the problem." "What’s wrong with that old building around the corner?" someone suggested. There were loud groans because the building at 517 Summit Avenue was a dilapidated mess. The building had first been used as a private home and later housed the Suburban School of Music. Then it was used by a printing company and finally as sleeping quarters by two elderly men.

There was more talk and, slowly, enthusiasm spread. Guild members decided that fund-raising projects, donations and hard work would get them a home. They knew it wouldn’t be easy. They expected the renovation of the house to be a major project. What they didn’t expect was the outcry of protest from Webster Groves residents, who lived near the building.

Evidently, the old house on Summit had a racier past than anyone had imagined. Residents recalled when the building was a public dance hall and blaring music and noisy crowds kept them awake all night. They weren’t about to go through that again. A headline from a newspaper clipping dated May 3, 1951 reads:

Residents Protest Guild Building:
’Don’t Want Dance Hall’

Neighbors Tell Council

The Webster Groves city council heard both sides of the theater debate in a heated round of meetings. The outcome? The city issued the Guild a permit to use the building as a theater with the agreement to observe stringent regulations as demanded by area residents.

Those regulations included no alcoholic beverages on the premises, no gambling, no carnivals or circuses and no activities past 10 p.m. except on the weekends. Oh yes, and no dancing on Sunday.

On June 20, 1951, the building belonged to the Guild. The battle seemed to be won. But when the new owners walked into their home, they found out the battle had just begun.

Nearly a foot of paper, dirt and debris littered the floors of the building, along with dead rats, insects and ashes. The odor was something no one wanted to talk about.

Plaster was falling, window panes were broken, and water had to be carried from a tap in the basement. There were no lights. An iron stove in the upstairs auditorium was the only heating system. The roof had to be replaced and the second floor had to be braced to support anticipated audiences. The whole project looked hopeless.

And then a strange thing happened.

People started to pitch in. Look at the photographs in the old scrapbooks and you’ll see men, women, [and] little kids carrying bushels of debris from the building and burning piles of trash.

And it wasn’t just Guild members. Professional plumbers, electricians and carpenters offered their services. The first bid for the new roof was $1,000. A roofing contractor in Webster replaced it for $200, the cost of materials. A welder from nearby Rock Hill helped Guild members put up steel beams to brace the second floor. Hardware companies, furniture stores, tile companies and a gravel and cement firm donated their wares.

The hard-working spirit took hold. Some of, the people who wound up working the hardest were the residents who at first had protested the loudest against a theater in their community. They were happy to brighten the old neighborhood eyesore, at last.

It’s estimated that the improvements, together with the purchase of the building, would have cost almost $40,000 if all the work hadn’t been done by volunteers. The actual cost was about $14,000.

To the Guild, that was still a lot of money. They got it through donations and proceeds from a long round of rummage sales, card parties, book reviews and fashion shows. The Theatre Guild of Webster Groves was the only drama group in St. Louis to own its own building.

Six hundred people came to the opening of the building on February 10, 1952. They wanted to see for themselves a dream turning real--the transformation of a run-down building into a theater. Some of those guests included the stars of "The Rose Tattoo,” a Tennessee Williams’ play being performed in St. Louis.

The touch of Tennessee Williams was a special one for the opening of the new building. The Guild had heard of him before. When Williams was a student at Washington University in 1936, he entered the Guild’s annual one-act play writing contest. . His Play "Magic Tower," was a prize winner and the Guild became the first producer of a Williams play. The playwright later rewrote his entry into a three-act entitled "The Glass Menagerie."

The Guild’s play writing contest, started in 1934, still goes on every year. It attracts hundreds of entries from all over the United States, as well as Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, and Australia. Nowadays, the contest is called the Russell Sharp Drama Fair after a charter member and past president. The fair is sort of an experiment, held each summer, to encourage people new to theater to display their potential ability. It’s unique in that it provides the chance for someone who’s never acted to work for a director who’s never directed in a play that’s never been performed. Who knows when another Tennessee Williams might come along?

Williams isn’t the only celebrity the Guild has known in its 50 years. (Editor’s note: this line dates Ms. Flood’s monograph as having been written in 1976.) Remember "Texas Bruce" from the 1950s? He was the host of the Wrangler’s Club, a local children’s television show. Texas Bruce is known to Guild members as Harry Gibbs, actor, director, and lifetime member.

A lot of people pass through the doors of the Guild. Some stay just long enough to appear in one show. Others have been around almost from the beginning. People meet, get married, [and] raise families. And when they’re old enough to talk, the offspring are enrolled in the Children’s Theatre which presents its own production three times a year.

Unlike the bad old days, the Guild now has some money in the bank. But members keep as watchful an eye on the treasury as they do their own family budgets. When it comes time to repair the air-conditioning system someone will get a friend to do it cheap. Someone else knows somebody who can get a break on insurance. And no one gets rid of old furniture or clothes without first checking the set and costume requirements of the current season.

Why do they do it? Why contribute all that time? After all, nobody makes a dime. In real life, the members are housewives, lawyers, janitors, businessmen, students. It must be this. They love the theater ... and maybe each other.

Each year brings more and more sell-out performances. As the Guild’s reputation grows, the seating capacity of 147 seems to shrink. What now? Expand? Look for a bigger building?

Doubtful. One member, standing on the front porch on a summer evening, put it this way. "We’re not the American Theater. We’re amateurs and we welcome anyone who wants to work in amateur theater. If we became big-time ...well, then it just wouldn’t be the Guild anymore."

If you’re ever in Webster Groves and happen upon Theatre Lane, stop in the third house on the left and take a look around. But one work of caution. If you’re not careful, you just might find yourself with a script in one hand and a paintbrush in the other.