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Really great set! St. Louis has a lot of problems, but a lack of character ain’t one of ‘em.
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Thanks for the thread!
Jesus. So many cities have made so much progress, I'm not sure I knew we still had this kind of blight in the US. Houses, sure, but big buildings like that? Haven't seen that in a long time. What's the story with this place?' This is a cool building. |
I’ve never explored St. Louis but I’ll be visiting next month and hope to spend some time out exploring if the weather cooperates. These photos have given me some ideas on spots to check out!
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Thanks for the tour. It was especially great seeing the perspectives from the RR.
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One surprise was the mix of architecture more common in the Northeast (red brick rowhouses etc) with the far more French inspired, New Orleans- esque houses, especially around Lafayette & Benton Park. As a place that historically was a bit of a dividing line between the cultures of the North & South it was exciting to see that written in the actual masonry of the city |
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https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...922/cyKOYV.jpg https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...923/6wmDCr.jpg It was intended to be a keystone of a larger "Gateway South" redevelopment project but obviously if that happens now it will be in a very different manner. It had been at least partially abandoned and parts of it (mostly the complex to the west) were already hollowed out by previous fires, so it definitely is a victim of blight but maybe just not as extreme as that single photo would imply - The building with the plane on top is called "City Museum" and it is a "folk art" style "exploratorium" kind of place. Not even sure how to describe it exactly. I didn't have a chance to go but I've heard amazing things about it and the history of it is also worth looking into. - And that rounded building was actually my hotel on the 2nd trip :D I don't remember any other building with rounded facades in STL so it really stood out in a cool way |
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As for architecture, Soulard & Lafayette Park/Square are probably the most historically immersive neighborhoods I've ever been to. Would very, very highly recommend paying those a visit If you need any recs or have any questions before the trip feel free to shoot me a message! |
Great tour!
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I don’t have much experience with St Louis and sadly haven’t been there since 1994(!). Seems like a city that both is a treasure trove but also still struggles a bit. I have two colleagues who went to Wash U who rave about how interesting it is.
Maybe I need a trip for a Cardinals game… Great photos as always. Honest question: is St Louis the most struggling big city in the US? You can find so many thing about other rust belt cities and their metro areas that seem to be righting themselves. Honestly I cannot think of much for STL (admittedly ignorant). |
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The closest comparison from my experience is Detroit, which I've visited twice now and which was clearly much more on the mend than STL. It also suffered from most, if not all of the same issues, but had its downtown mostly intact and so when it started rehabbing its urban core, it could point to that single crown jewel as a sign of progress. St. Louis does have some neighborhoods that have seen very positive growth, especially in Midtown/Central West End. Unfortunately, the growth has been fairly piecemeal rather than a concerted effort in one region, which does not give it the same kind of positive PR to point to. Outside of those areas, other parts are still shrinking and decaying rapidly. During the time I was there(which was only about 3 days total between the two trips) I witnessed 2 buildings on fire in addition to the warehouse that had burnt down a few days earlier. What I've noticed about the Rust Belt in general is that a lot of places have revived their downtowns and seen population growth in the core city even as outer neighborhoods might be shrinking, but that the city as a whole is reaching positive growth. Chicago is still losing population in parts of the South Side but has seen tremendous growth in River North, West Loop etc which makes up for it. Detroit obviously has Corktown and Midtown where development is at a breakneck pace, even while some of the fringe neighborhoods are losing residents still. St. Louis has some very positive things going on in certain places, but whereas Detroit succeeded at making Downtown the core of the larger metro again (even if it has lots of abandoned areas in the immediate vicinity), St. Louis has not been able to do that yet. I really do think STL has a chance at growth again, and it does still have many institutions and economic engines (universities, medical centers, offices, arenas, theatres...) that set it apart from the suburbs and will bring the commuters in, but if it can't revive larger sections of the city into being desirable for new residents rather than just a few new apartments, I do think it will continue to struggle with being just sort of part of its metro rather than the core of it |
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Great set. I'm glad you made it to City Museum. I think in all my travels, that's the one place where I'm most glad I went out of my way to spend time there. Even though I'd seen photos of it before, it was such a trippy, unique experience. I'd go back to St. Louis to explore that more over visiting the Arch again (although that's also plenty trippy in a different way).
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Yeah... welcome to STL, where arsonists and the homeless burn down irreplaceable historic landmarks every other day. Vagrants burned down the Crunden-Martin warehouse complex the day after Thanksgiving, just as it was preparing to undergo rehab into office, retail, and industrial space as part of a billion+ dollar redevelopment of the south riverfront.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/zykIdL.jpg Pretty sure vagrants also set fire to the St. Liborius rectory a few months ago (building on the left below) which had previously been used as a women's shelter. The church itself had been repurposed as a fucking incredible indoor skate park that had received national attention (http://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/17/op...-liborius.html) but that burned down too, of course. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/ay43qw.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/7hcJcrBs/Screen...2-15-22-20.png Between the fires; the parasitic, negligent property owners (many of them out-of-state); the weird, unrelenting suburban hatred toward the city (including from the business community); and the backward-as-fuck state of MO, it's a seemingly never-ending uphill battle. And speaking of parasitic property owners, the Church of Scientology has owned this beauty in Lafayette Square for decades now, and they just fucking refuse to do anything with it. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1...923/1aMStT.jpg Detroit is fortunate to have a business community that is rallying around its downtown, which is where most of Detroit's success has been centered and makes for good PR. Conversely, St. Louis' oblivious business community continues to triple down on suburban office parks like it's 1960 while bitching incessantly about crime even though crime is the lowest it's been in decades. |
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Also, I had originally heard about St. Liborius b/c of the skatepark conversion and that is a massive loss. That was a truly unique landmark and I'm sad that it's gone. When researching history about the city, I saw a quote something like "We don't cry over lost buildings in St. Louis because otherwise our tears would reach the Mississippi and overflow the levies" and sadly that still seems very relevant - And to kind of touch on the city/metro/state divide, it is sad to see the state have an openly antagonistic approach to the city, even as KC has become a darling of urban development in the last few years. The city has the necessary infrastructure and consolidated services to constitute a very solid ROI if investment were done properly which would benefit the state tremendously as well, instead of spreading resources thin across a bunch of low density sprawl like you said I agree that it does seem like an uphill battle though, and I second your frustration. The metro does seem very intentionally disconnected from the city in my experience. I took the train out to Clayton at one point and while the rail system does provide a pretty useful transit backbone for the city/metro, it seems uninterested in providing service anywhere outside of the main East/West corridor, which itself felt very disconnected from the neighborhoods where people actually lived. In a better world, the green line would have started to tie all the pieces back together again, but ffs i hope they AT LEAST build the Rapid bus line to replace it. Its way less of a win, but at least maybe it'll be something. Just out of curiosity, from a (I'm assuming) local, if you could do any few things to spur development in STL what would they be? On that long train trip back I spent some time thinking about it and have a few 'armchair urban planning' takes but I'm curious what someone with more familiarity with the region would prioritize |
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It's seriously one of the coolest things my family has ever done. It makes Disney World seem like the lamest place on earth by comparison. As for st. Louis being the most struggling major city, it seems to me to be mostly a downtown problem. Downtown St. Louis has very real and severe headwinds, but there are some great nabes out in the rest of the city. Anyway, thanks for the tour, great pics!! |
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Anyway, I'm interested to hear your "armchair" takes. Here are 4 of the most badly needed changes in my mind: 1) Go hard on traffic calming (way too many overly-wide thoroughfares throughout the city), zero tolerance for traffic violence, narrow roads all over the place, and aggressively expand pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure. 2) Get serious about levying severe fines on negligent property owners, and streamline the taking of neglected properties through eminent domain. Some progress has been made recently, with increased fines and a couple of prominent eminent domain threats used to spur movement (Railway Exchange and Millennium Hotel). I believe there was some legislation in the past few years making it easier for neighbors to sue negligent owners, which has been used in a couple high-profile cases. But negligent owners are a huge problem throughout the City, and something drastic needs to be done about it. 3) Expand and modernize transit: a N-S light rail line through the meat of the city that sort-of follows the curvature of the river to complements the E-W line and complete the backbone; then more bus routes, increased frequency, and streamlined fare collection to form the connective tissue. and bus rapid transit to serve the suburbs. 4) In additional to office conversions and the occasional new high-rise, the city should make it effortless to build smaller residential (row houses, town houses, X-fams) on the scads of empty lots surrounding downtown to reconnect it to the neighborhoods north and west (sadly the railroad gash to the south will be hard to connect, I think, and the east side of the river is a whole other ordeal). A big part of DT's problem is that it's so disconnected from the surrounding city, and DT residential density isn't high enough to support robust commercial. |
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The CWE, however is far more central to population centers of the greater metro and developments are clearly seeing a greater ROI. If the city builds up its tax base to the West first, I don’t think it will be swimming upstream for funding projects on the East Side into the future, and maybe more residential projects DT could finally be realized rather than getting stuck in development hell. In point 4 you mention smaller developments being prioritized and I couldn’t agree more. Both large scale developments and refurbishments are prone to stalling when funding disappears, but smaller projects that require less overhead could be far more viable. Personally I think infill similar to this (which I see all over Chicago) would be quicker to build, more cohesive with the existing neighborhoods and most importantly give people the chance for property ownership which would be a big plus in a country where home ownership is rapidly declining. https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...922/i6Xtci.png Curious, do you think the city should continue pushing projects that try to emulate historical brick architecture or try to do modern styles like this? As for transit: again, same sentiments but reverse order. Also, as much as I love trains I think Bus Rapid Transit Lines have a way higher chance of getting built right now and could maybe get upgraded to light rail or tram lines in the future once there's proof of ridership. I would first build a BRT line from the Maplewood blue line station, east along Manchester toward Forest Park and then up Kingshighway to at least MLK. I think the area south of Forest Park could be great for some 3-5 story apartments and the Northern end for smaller infill Next, I would propose a line along Grand from Tower Grove Park to Fairgrounds Park which would tie in the Arts District/SLU. After that, a line along Lindell/Olive from Forest Park to the Arch with maybe 5 stops tops at key high traffic locations. Lastly, I think once the West Side is a bit more tied together, a N/S line along the riverfront would be able to support some larger projects like what is happening around Ballpark Village. Here’s a VERY crude MS Paint representation of what I’m thinking https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/6...921/AjSu2q.jpg As for Point 1, I definitely think it’s necessary but may have to be integrated neighborhood by neighborhood otherwise the pricetag to implement it city wide would be prohibitive. Maybe some of those thoroughfares could be good for transit lines, they definitely have the space for it. Florissant near Crown Candy is huge but had like one car on it at a time. For Point 2, I’m hardly an expert on property law but I know Detroit implemented something similar and it seemed to have very positive results. One kind of left field thing I think the city should do is start promoting individual neighborhoods to visitors rather than the whole city. It took me doing serious ‘urbanism nerd’ levels of research to find out that places like Lafayette/Soulard/ CWE existed. I think if these places were promoted without the preconceived feelings people have toward the city as a whole, it would allow people to dip their toe into exploring the city and then maybe come back later to check out more rather than writing off the whole city from the jump. |
^ Thanks for the ideas! As soon as I get a few minutes to formulate a coherent response I'm gonna get back to you. There's a fair amount of that sort of infill (first image) going on throughout the south side (not so much 3-story but lots of 2-story). I'll share some photos ASAP.
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STL is one of only 2 large US cities in the US that is still an independent city, separated from the larger (more wealthy St. Louis County). STL City makes up roughly 11% of the metro population of just under 3M people. The City itself is a tiny 62 sq. miles. The oldest, most impoverished areas in North City & some in South City make up a portion of that. Lots of old warehouses & factories dot these areas, many of which are too far gone. Bad, corrupt government has festered for decades due to the flight of residents across the county line into St. Louis, Jefferson & most notably St. Charles County, which has far surpassed the population of the City proper. St. Louis County alone is close to a million people. St. Charles County is growing exponentially. STL also has downtown Clayton, which is the county seat for STL County. This is created by the City County divide. Both areas compete for businesses & projects. Clayton has seen a lot of residential & mixed use mid-high rise over the years, while Downtown has seen less. The flight to the surrounding burbs has created a tax base issue, but the combo of Rams settlement & federal covid related funds has the City flush with cash. Then in the spring of 2025 a massive tornado destroyed large areas of an already struggling North STL. This is coming off of the covid hangover that downtown STL has suffered from. With such a focus on office, downtown partially emptied due to hybrid & work from home policies. Companies like AT&T, US Bank, Bank of America, etc. to name a few went hybrid hurting the office related traffic. Then the supporting businesses like restaurants close as a result. Now saying all of the, the MAIN part of the CBD is rather small, but shows the most struggle post-covid. That has led to some businesses to flee to Clayton, etc. The crime issue was most noticeable during covid when the offices were empty. I believe the crime issue is mostly perception now, but that is hard to fix if businesses aren't flocking downtown. STL has close to 20 Fortune 500-1000 companies & several massive private companies like Edward Jones, World Wide Technology & Enterprise. None of them besides Stifel choose to be located Downtown. They are either in Clayton, Westport or suburban office parks. Now Chesterfield MO, a large wealthy suburb is creating a true "downtown" with mid-high rise buildings. This will just be another drain on Downtown STL. Now, on to the future & the positives. The former Millennium Hotel site is being torn down for an amazing mixed use development featuring a 45 story town, multiple mid-rise buildings & a concert venue. This is near the Ballpark Village area, which is thriving. The burned out complex is over a billion dollar project south of downtown that will likely forge on without the older brick structures. The old May Company HQ (Railway Exchange) is a huge focus of the current mayor & City leaders. I think this will get rehabbed soon. It is currently an eyesore. If you drive a few minutes west, you get into Downtown West where the new MLS soccer stadium, Union Station & lots of new developments have flourished. If you keep driving west, you get to the Central West End where the City Foundry & new high rise welcomes you to the area. The CWE is still one of the coolest urban neighborhoods in the country. Then further west, you get to Forest Park, Washington University, The University City Loop & eventually Clayton. That drive from Downtown to Clayton is ultra-dense, ultra-cool & amazing. From neighborhoods like Soulard, Benton Park, Compton Heights, Lafayette Square, Tower Grove, The Hill, Dogtown, the Grove, Old North, DeBaliviere Place, I could go on, the City is amazing. Are there problems, of course. North & some parts of South City need help, but for the most part, STL City is a treasure-trove nowhere near the low-points Detroit hit. The big issue is past corrupt government, bad policy, suburban flight, competing interests (County vs. City) & old, expensive to rehab building stock. The crime issue (some real, some just perception) have hurt the City. The County vs. City mentality in general hurts the City. I know of many that are doing great things to bring the City of St. Louis back. It will take work with Covid & tornado setbacks, but it has always been a City of innovation & comeback stories. There is WAY MORE to the story, but that gives you some background. Sorry for the book, but I felt the need to tell the story. |
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Learning about the city's history was fascinating because it went through most of the same problems as anywhere else in the 50s/60s but being unable to annex the suburbs in the way other places did really did leave a tremendous negative impact going forward I also did see some of the tornado damage around Debaliviere Place and it was no joke, but thankfully I did see a lot of rehabbing taking place at least in the areas around Forest Park. Not sure if some of the areas further North will see as much tlc but im hoping there is an effort to rebuild/ rehab as much as possible. The city definitely has an uphill battle in front of it, but its clear a lot of locals deeply love the city and are pulling for it. I'm very curious to see what Downtown's future as a residential core could look like. I am also curious about the area around Laclede's Landing as a residential center. It seemed fairly quiet when i visited but I know there are a lot of condo/apartment projects in the works in that area. Any insight into the growth of residential in that neighborhood that you could share? Both days that I visited were blisteringly cold and one was a holiday, so it was hard to gauge foot traffic when people weren't exactly out in droves |
I’ll add a couple of other issues St. Louis is up against regarding population. First, while international migration is the "secret sauce" for growth in a lot of urban cores, St. Louis just struggles to attract immigrants for some reason. Our Hispanic population, for example, is small compared to most other metros. There are signs that’s changing, but the Census data has been all over the place lately, showing huge spikes one year and drops the next, so it’s hard to know what's going on
The second issue is aging. The Central Corridor and the inner-ring suburbs are actually doing well at attracting transplants, but the metro population overall is flatlining because we’re literally dying off. Our birth rate and migration aren't keeping up with the death rate. Local demographers think that as the population gets older, the death rate will keep creeping up, and we'll keep losing people unless we find a way to get more people to move (or be born) here. And sorry to be "that guy" for a minute, but I want to clarify a point about our government structure. We are indeed one of only two major "independent cities" (along with Baltimore) where the city itself handles all the county functions. However, there’s a nuance with places like Denver and San Francisco. They are "city-counties," meaning there is still a "county" on paper, but it’s merged with the city—they share boundaries and offices. Then you have DC, which is a city, county, and state all rolled into one. My point is that other core cities have made this unified model work (though Denver did annex a massive chunk of Adams County to build DIA in the 90s, giving them room for some suburban-style growth as a byproduct). The problem is we just tend to shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to regional cooperation. To Dogtown's point, we don't play well together. St. Louis County and the City work fairly well together, in the way that many divorced parents try to work together to for the benefit of their children. St. Charles County acts like a preteen who thinks they’re fully independent and doesn't need their parents. Jefferson County treats itself like a rural escape for people who hate the city (but still use it for work and other amenities), so they aren't much help either. Our best allies might actually be the Illinois counties, but everyone forgets them because of the state line and the "perception issue" with East St. Louis. |
Thanks for the photothread.
St. Louis reminds me of a distopian Montreal. It's as if the Dementors sucked the life away from the streets and let it decay for 50-60 years. Really strange, as it seems to have "good bones", a somewhat similar architecture. The central city was emptied out of its commercial activity to the benefit of the suburbs, I imagine? |
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A few things of note. "Downtown CBD" might encompass 14 blocks east-west & 12 blocks north-south. That area has had challenges, but it is not all abandoned & burned out. The odd thing is the fact that Downtown West (very close to downtown) & the Central West End are not included as part of "Downtown per se'. Those areas are doing well IMO & have seen many more developments & projects. That being said, the Ballpark Village part of Downtown is doing well with the Millennium project & BPV. I think it will take Downtown boosters, regional politicians & public perception to change the narrative & move things forward. I see signs of positivity. Time will tell. |
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Especially for older cities like STL who reached their peak at a time when families frequently included 5-6 kids or more, I imagine this change in birth rates can cause the population to deflate enormously compared to newer cities like Vegas/Phoenix that saw population growth during the modern era of people having one or two kids if they're having any at all. Quote:
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That being said, there has been a lot of emptying out of the city core to the suburbs for a while and Clayton (a suburb to the West) did seem to have a more robust office crowd. Some of these photos might not represent the normal day in the CBD as well. Overall it did feel fairly empty, and the number of open restaurants/ stores did drop off the closer to the River that I went, however there are a few factors that make these pics feel especially bleak. I generally try to focus on buildings rather than people and usually wait until there is no one in frame to take photos. The one exception in this thread is the businessman walking in front of the barricaded & tagged up Railway Exchange Building. That one was purposeful just because I thought it made for a good shot. Both trips were also during extreme cold snaps when no one was outside, and the first trip was during a holiday when many office workers would have been off. I won’t lie, I did feel a vibe similar to your description the first time I visited, but the 2nd trip lined up with a big convention in town, and I did see a big upswell in visitors toward the end of that trip. This moment does feel like a nexus point for downtown, and I do think that another round of restoration may be coming soon along with some big developments, but obviously we'll have to wait and see. |
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