Chesterfield residents can step inside a city landmark this Sunday, May 17, when sculptor Don Wiegand's studio at One Wiegand Drive opens for a free public event from 2 to 5 p.m.

The event, called "Experience Historic Preservation," was announced at the April 21 City Council meeting by organizer Michael Kane, who invited the public to visit Wiegand's workspace near the intersection of Baxter Road and Edison Avenue.

The nearly 3-acre property has a story of its own. The studio's central structure is a brick slaughterhouse built in the 1920s. Wiegand's father Frank bought the property in the 1950s, and Don began restoring and expanding it in 1965 as a high school junior. The city declared it an official historical landmark in 2008.

The building has survived a Christmas Eve fire in 1971, the Great Flood of 1993, which buried it under 12 feet of water, and a years-long legal battle with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over a proposed levee that would have claimed the site. Wiegand prevailed each time. The Wiegand Foundation purchased the studio in June 2019 with help from an anonymous donor and began renovations.

Wiegand, who has lived in Chesterfield since age 5, earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University and is a member of the National Sculpture Society. His portrait bronzes include Charles Lindbergh, Ernest Hemingway, and August Busch Jr. The Lindbergh bust is at the Smithsonian; the Hemingway bronze sits in the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Locally, his life-size bronze "Maura," a sculpture of a running girl dedicated in 1999 for Chesterfield's 10th anniversary, stands at the Family Aquatic Center on Lydia Hill Drive.

"As a kid, I wanted to build a place that was the treehouse without the tree," Wiegand has said of his studio.

The studio is at One Wiegand Drive, on the east side of Baxter Road near Annie Gunn's restaurant. Admission is free.