Still Hope for College Hill Neighborhood

I'm disappointed that College Hill has been removed from Preservation Review. The argument that the neighborhood is too far gone to save is the wrong attitude.

If anything, the fact that so much has been lost warrants that what is left should be preserved that much more carefully.

While admittedly several streets in the neighborhood have lost large amounts of housing stock, there are ample survivors on neighboring blocks that can help inspire the in-fill that could eventually fill the holes.

I'm just really worried that when an entire neighborhood is swept away, we end up with bland, suburban-style housing that looks bad, is built cheaply, and ends up abandoned even faster than the original building stock.

Take the example of the failed housing development in nearby Hyde Park; the last thing we need is "blank slate" development that always seems to fail.

What remains in College Hill, which is substantial, should be likened to the remaining good teeth in a mouth; why on Earth would we want to pull more teeth when so many have already been lost? Do we want partial dentures, or pull all the healthy teeth out for an entire new set, and risk having no teeth at all?

Mount Grace Convent

Having read about the Pink Sisters at Built St. Louis, I knew I had to check out this bastion of peace in the middle of the College Hill neighborhood. The church is an odd mix of several styles, so it's hard to really label it anything. But nonetheless, I greatly respect that the Sisters have stuck it out, even as the area around it has suffered over the last half century. Across the street is an overgrown forest, part of O'Fallon Park.

Touring the Northside

It's always interesting to take someone up to the North Side inside Grand for the first time; last week, I took my friend Jeff, in from China, up around some of my favorite neighborhoods. The desolation, and houses decimated by brick theft, were shocking to Jeff.

I'd always been intrigued by this small, wood frame building, sitting as the last remaining structure on the block just west of St. Augustine. Why this building survived, and nothing else, is one of the great mysteries of this section of St. Louis Place. You can see it in the midst of other outbuildings in the Sanborn map below.

"What happened to that house?!" was Jeff's first reaction to this brick-rustled house nearby.

But all is not lost, as these two houses below illustrate, up at the top of the hill near the water towers.

The house above was abandoned until it was rehabbed a few years ago. The house below is well maintained, and shows that someone still cares on this block.

Further on up, near O'Fallon Park, the streets are lined with numerous, beautiful houses, well maintained and anchoring this corner of the Northside. If only this level of care could spread further from this area, the entire Northside would be a stunning place to live.

It's always fun to show people what the north half of the city is really like, good and bad, and I had a great day showing Jeff around the Northside.

Destruction, College Hill

I read about this devastated block on Exploring St. Louis, and I headed up to check it out myself.Seriously, what does it take for a street to make it to this level of destruction? I lecture frequently in my classes about the abandonment of Rome, and how whole sections were left empty because there were simply no people to live there. Is that what we are witnessing here? The decline of a civilization?I have to admit every time I come to the College Hill neighborhood, I get depressed. It is so desolate, so mysterious and so overgrown that I can't imagine this as ever being a bustling neighborhood.

College Hill, Part 2

College Hill really is on a hill, and these views show how high it is. This mansion above is surrounded by nothing but sky, quickly clearing after the storm.Looking downward, you can see how this street was truncated by the interstate. Below is this tidy row of houses, like you might see in Hyde Park to the south.This burnout is interesting, as it doesn't follow the normal flat, box like design of most rowhouses in St. Louis. Perhaps it was an older house in the neighborhood.This house sits surrounded by overgrown foliage. Elsewhere in America, this exact house could fetch $400K, but here, it rots in obscurity.

College Hill, Part 1

College Hill is north of the Grand Water Tower, and south of O'Fallon Park. It is an area shrouded in mystery, and cloaked in a severe amount of desolation. I don't think I saw maybe six people as we drove through this neighborhood two weeks ago.The area really is hilly, hence the name College Hill; there is a deep valley in between the Grand Blvd ridge and the high lands around the Park. The area is largely abandoned down in between the two hills.Unique houses abound, including this wonderful buff brick house with a turret......and this incongruous brown McMansion built only a few years ago.See the area from the air here.