Perhaps we did not complete this task to its specifications; we explored a neighborhood not our own.

At the dawn of the 20th century, St. Louis was the fourth largest and first wealthiest city in the United States. But much has changed since then. The city lost more than half of its population in the second half of the 20th century. White Flight led to Urban Blight. And now some of St. Louis' neighborhoods are among the most dangerous in the country, if not THE most dangerous.



But those neighborhoods were built when the city was world class! And they were built of brick and mortar. Blighted shells of neighborhoods were ripe for gentrification, and a decades-long effort to revitalize downtown has just begun to see results, with downtown showing an actual population growth in 2006, the first since 1950.

But the picture is not all roses and rainbows. Downtown proper has seen an amazing resurgence, as has some other neighborhoods in South City, like Lafayette Square and the beautiful old Soulard neighborhood, built by the French. But North St. Louis still looks like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. To explore a neighborhood in deepest, darkest night, we went to North City. We did not get out of the car.

I thought it fitting that we explore St. Louis Avenue as a representation of St. Louis. We documented a 3.4 mile stretch from Kingshighway to Florissant Ave, and traversed three neighborhoods: the Ville, Mid-City, and St. Louis Place.

The Ville
Long before white flight began to infect the city, the Ville was a black neighborhood, and one of the city's strongest. However, it has since declined along with the surrounding city. The Ville's architectural character is largely defined by small, one-story brick cottages that strive to impress despite their tiny size. Miniature Second Empire and Italianate houses are common, and many of them are still in top condition today. Others have been abandoned.

Mid-City
Much of this area was once industrial; the architectural influences of the adjacent Ville and St. Louis Place neighborhoods can be seen as well. What survives today is largely in ruins.

St. Louis Place
This section of the city is one of the most devastated. Vast tracts of land are completely empty; just south of Cass Avenue the street grid itself no longer exists- it was cleared for the massive and long-since demolished Pruitt-Igoe housing projects. It has been said that Modernism died on March 16th, 1972 with the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, a housing complex that was supposed to cure many urban ills through design. However, insufficient funding doomed the Utopian project before it was even complete. Modernism died in St. Louis. Ha.


Pruitt-Igoe going down...

Now where the buildings do survive, they're often quite beautiful. St. Louis Avenue is lined with numerous examples of fine architecture, and the surviving houses have a uniform brick construction and a real elegance.

Many of the pictures we took were too blurry to even show here. Some of the ones we are showing are pretty blurry, as well. Baby Animal Petting Zoo and I used the description field to discuss what we would do with the various pictures. We've left our discussion there for your amusement. See for yourself the urban decay that is the yin to an otherwise thriving city's gentrified yang.