Tearing Down Buildings for the Gateway Mall

Eastern St. Louis Place: Revisited

My first experience with brick thieves occurred in the eastern part of St. Louis Place, easily the most devastated portion of the city with whole streets and blocks now vacant. Honestly, it's sickening to see how empty these blocks are now when I know what used to be here. I can only know what it would be like to have known what these streets were like when all the houses were intact, and not just the few survivors I learned to love.What had been dozens of houses along Montgomery Street are now gone, and the only view is the back of some in-fill houses along the park. See what used to be there here.Below is the vacant space that once held one of the most beautiful but simple houses on St. Louis Avenue east of the park. I knew it wasn't safe, and my fears proved true, and it was soon attacked. It's completely gone now.But all is not lost; many parts of the neighborhood are occupied and well-kept, though I'm sure someone said that about the now demolished blocks ten years ago.Read about some of the beautiful houses lost along Wright Street in the last three years in my earlier entries:

More Ruins of an American City
St. Louis Place Blockbusting
I Would Have Lived There

On a final note, I drove up Jefferson last Saturday in the evening to visit a friend in Old North. The drive is surreal; as I headed north, I got a strange feeling that I normally get out in the countryside of Illinois near my family's farm: the feeling of being out in the middle of nowhere. No lights shone from windows, and I didn't see anyone on the streets. A couple of headlights shone in the distance, as they so often do on long country roads. One of the densest neighborhoods in America, not just St. Louis, is almost completely gone.

Council Plaza and Grand Center Part 2: Urban Renewal

Above is a Sanborn Fire Insurance map of the intersection of Forest Park and Grand Boulevards, where the Council Plaza would later rise in the 1960's. As can be seen in the map, Forest Park used to dead-end at Grand, at a now gone Handlan Park. Looking to the east on the map, one can see the western end of the sprawling Mill Creek Valley, torn down in the 1950's.Looking at this aerial photo east towards downtown, the extent of the clearance of Midtown unfolds for the viewer. It is stunning at how much was demolished, and in its place the familiar snaking path of Highway 40 (actually built on top of Market Street or Manchester Avenue) as well as the other on-ramps and other streets built in the aftermath of the wholesale clearance.What is fascinating is the viewer can track the building of Council Plaza; first Grandview Apartments went up, and the remaining three buildings, including Council Tower. Below, one of the first developments built was Laclede Town, once a model for urban renewal but not mostly torn down and replaced by green fields for SLU and Harris Stowe around Compton Avenue.I've been told that Mill Creek still flows through a sewer in the area. Ironically, sixty years since clearance, some land still sits vacant.

All photos from "This is Our St. Louis" by Harry M. Hagen.

SLU Wasteland

While photographing the Pevely Dairy fire, I parked on the far side of the lawn of the new SLU research facility. Trekking across the lawn, I was shocked at just how large it is. I know, I know, how dare I criticize doctors who are working hard to save people's lives? They can do whatever they feel like, right, and I should just shut up?Hardly; I live in this city and I have a right to not have an entire mile of Grand Blvd between 40 and I-44 turned into an absolutely horrible traffic sewer. What could be a pleasant walk from the neighborhoods to the second downtown of Grand Center is basically so awful that only the truly intrepid or indigent would ever attempt it.SLU should move to St. Charles County if this is the way it wants to build its campus. Disgusting.

Calvary Cemetery Prairie

It recently came to my attention via a newspaper article that virgin prairie still exists inside the confines of the sprawling Calvary Cemetery in North St. Louis.It is worth checking out at the far northern end of the cemetery.What is even more jarring is that the city ceases to exist around the prairie, save for a church steeple in nearby Baden.

Kirksville Urban Renewal

Wright Street: Almost Completely Gone

I probably shouldn't have gone back to the 1900 block of Wright, because what I saw there was even more depressing than when I visited two months ago. What had once been a somewhat viable block a mere year ago is now reduced to future "urban prairie."Above is all that is left of this house, which I photographed before. You can see the ruins here, at the old post.Above was the location of the powder blue house and its neighbors, now obliterated. See them here.But by far the most disgusting demolition on the block was started by the city on a building that could have been saved, easily. See my original post here, and then view the sad remnants below. Unbeknownst to me originally, the long block, as others have named the apartments, were technically two buildings, built next to each other to give the impression of one long building. Unfortunately, with its mate demolished, the remaining half is now in an alarming state of near collapse, most likely the result of brick rustling.Above and below, the elegant doors to the apartments sit open, ripe for criminal activity.Below you can see the ghost left by the adjoining building, with some of the original cast iron from the fireplaces still intact.The ruins are perhaps almost as terrifying as the butchered houses over on Montgomery (which, by the way, have been put out of their misery by the city), with a huge gaping hole that looks likes it will contract and engulf the street below.
I tried to capture in images the bulge of the outer walls that look like they could collapse at any moment.

A Pasture?

This the infamous section of St. Louis Place where there is literally nothing left of the city that once existed here. Easily thousands of people once lived in the confines of these long blocks and now there is nothing.Here is an aerial view of the area along 23rd Street.It's hard tell that you're actually in the city here, and it looks more like you're out in the country.This area is often featured in articles about the ailing North Side--rightfully or wrongly--with the skyscrapers of Downtown not far away, at least geographically.