Grand Center--of Nowhere

I recently traveled down to the Grand Center area to see the street festival. I have rarely seen this many people in Grand Center, despite its moniker as the center of something. What, I don't entirely know. It's definitely not the center of nightlife, or a thriving residential neighborhood.In fact, despite the recent renovation of the Continental Building, which has now apparently devolved into a glorified dorm for SLU partiers, there has been little to no building for new residents in decades.

And quite to the contrary, the area's many cultural institutions seem to do little to make the area any more than an urban office park. Seen below is the atrociously maintained side yard of the Masonic Temple's parking garage. The owners clearly never planted anything the entire summer, or for years. Every plant seen in this picture is a weed, including thistles and dandelions.Below is the University Club Tower--the old one. Like many institutions, the University Club bailed on the city and built a new tower in the suburbs. Ironically, this loss of an institutional history may, and I stress may, have led to its now impending demise. Would it have survived if had stuck to its guns in the city that gave birth to it?Despite some horribly misguided additions, including a poorly matched elevator tower and a hopelessly dated penthouse, the building still exhibits its refined sense of style. Below is a detail of the side of the University club Tower.Below is the entrance to the University Club Tower, with its impressive stone arch and cartouche.The top of the building apparently featured a club where the titans of St. Louis industry--Bush, Mallinkrodt, Lemp and others--gathered to trade tales of whatever they talked about.Below is the entrance to the Humboldt Building, one of the many finely decorated buildings along the heart of Grand Center.Below is the filthy, but noble headquarters of the Grand Center Partners, a sorry group of suburban minded individuals who don't understand why Grand Center isn't a hopping place to be when there aren't shows going on at the Fox or Powell Hall. You wonder why they can't even figure out how to clean their own building. Grand Center is run by Vincent Schoemehl, the hapless mayor of St. Louis who presided over the hemorrhaging of one hundred thousand people from the city during his tenure. He came up with the now failed idea of Schoemehl Pots, which were an attempt to curb crime by blocking off city streets with barriers to prevent crime. The only problem is, the criminals simply walked. In reality, these planters helped to isolate blocks and create more crime, because the criminals didn't have to worry about through traffic driving by and interrupting their mischief.Grand Center believes that the black top parking lot should dominate the area. Just look at this map from their own website. If I were head of Grand Center, I would be embarrassed by the amount of vacant land surrounding Grand Blvd.Grand Center looks like something from Las Vegas, a fake town sitting like an amusement park in the middle of a sea of parking.Below is Powell Hall, which is home to the St. Louis Symphony. They stuck it out in Grand Center in the 1960's and should be applauded for it. But they should be criticized for their selfish occupation of acres of real estate for their damned surface parking lots. Here's an idea: let's build a parking garage and sell the rest for a profit. Maybe they could build musicians' housing or something.This picture below shows how to waste prime frontage space along one of the busiest streets in St. Louis, with none other than a cinder block wall masquerading as art.And yet again, a useless grass lawn right across from Powell Hall. Does this piece of vacant land help or hinder Grand Center? You tell me; on one of the busiest days of the year for Grand Center, not a single person was even lying in the grass. Can someone say useless green space?The Veterans' Hospital, a much needed service in a city like St. Louis, manages to become a detriment to the area. Sitting like a strange, futuristic space ship, the hospital could have been built in any number of more convenient places, but instead, they demolished one of the greatest concentrations of Gilded Age mansions in St. Louis to build this monstrosity.The Sun Theater represents great opportunity for the area, if it can be renovated before facing serious neglect. I will admit that Grand Center is trying hard to fill the space.
And here are yet more of the vacant parking lots that sit empty 90% of the year, anxiously awaiting lazy suburbanites who refuse to walk more than a block to the Fox. All of the parking lots in Grand Center could easily be condensed into two large parking garages, if the organizations in the area weren't so selfishly guarding their little parking fiefdoms.While the view of the Central West End is beautiful from Grand Center, we shouldn't be able to see this if the neighborhood was as thriving as it should be. Just as it was fifty years ago, Grand Center needs to fill these lots with buildings--which will block the view--but provide the lifeblood to revive this neighborhood.Up next, I will document some of the housing that is still left in Grand Center, and if utilized effectively, could begin the revival of the residential portion of the neighborhood.